Digital Delirium - Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture

Transcription

CultureTexts
General Editors
Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
CultureTexts is a seriesof creative explorations of the theory,
politics and culture of hypermodern society.
Titles
Ha&ng
the Future: Stories for the Flesh-Eating
90s
Data Trash: The Theory of the Mrtual
Class
Arthur Kroker and Michael A. Weinstein
Spasm: Virtual
Reality, Android
Music and Electric Fksb
Arthur Kroker (with accompanying CD by Steve Gibson)
The Last Sex: Feminism and Outlaw Bodies
Edited and introduced by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
Seduction
Jean Baudrillard
Death at the Parasite Cafb
Stephen Pfohl
The PossessedIndividual:
Technology and the French Postmoabn
Arthur Kroker
The Postmodern Scene: &cremental
Culture and Hyper-Aesthetics
Arthur Broker and David Cook
The Hysterical Male: New Feminist Theory
Ideology and Power in the Age of Lenin in Ruins
Panic Encyclopedia
Arthur Kroker, Marilouise Kroker and David Cook
Life Ajer
Postmodernism:
Essays on Value and Culture
Edited and introduced by John Fekete
Body Invaders
Digital Delirium
edited and introduced by
Arthur & Marilouise Kroker
New World Perspectives
Mont&l
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Published by CTHEORY BOOKS in
partnership with NWP and copyright, © 2001, by CTHEORY
BOOKS. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means
(including photocopying, recording, or information storage and
retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher,
except for reading and browsing via the World Wide Web.
Users are not permitted to mount this file on any network
servers. Readers are encouraged to download this material for
personal use. Commercial use with permission only.
Digital
Delirium
0 1997, New World Perspectives
CultureTexts Series
The writers contributing
to Digital Delirium retain copyright on their individual
works presented in this collection. Works of art copyright by the artists.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information,
address:
84 Rue Notre Dame 0. #800,
Montreal, QC H2Y lS6
First published in Canada in 1997
Published simultaneously
in the USA by St. Martin’s
Printed
Press.
in Canada
ISBN o-920393-71-3
Canadian Cataloguing
Main Entry under
Digital
in Publication
Data
title:
delirium
(CultureTexts)
ISBN o-920393-71-3
1.. Information
and technology--Social
aspects.
2. Information
technology--Social
aspects--United
States.
3. Information
society.
4. Computers and
civilization.
I. Kroker,
Arthur,
1945- . II. Kroker,
Marilouise.
III.
Series.
T14.5.D54
1997
303.48'34
c97-900025-4
Digital Delirium
Arthur and Marilouise
ix
Kroker
30 Cyber-Daysin San Francisco
Arthur
and Marilouise
Kroker
Singing the Blues in Cyber-City
Red’s Java House
Digital Dustbowl: Squatting On the Dock of the Bay
Remake Millennium
Yahoo! Capitalism
30 Smoke-Free Days in California
Digital Angels: Timothy Lear-y in the Clouds
Out There Havin’ Fun in the Warm California Sun
R. U. Sirius
2
4
G
7
9
10
11
12
The View from Butte, Montana
Pat Munday
13
Digital Futures
It’s Better to be Inspired than Wired:
An Interview with R.U. Sirius
Jon Lebkowsky
.
16
Unstable Networks
Bruce Sterling
25
Global Debt and Parallel Universe
Jean Baudrilkzrd
38
Cyberwar, God and Television:
An Interview with Paul Virilio
Louise Wihon
41
vi
Digital
Delirium
Vivisecting the 90s:
An Interview with Jean Baudrillard
49
Caroline Bayard and Graham Knight
Civil Society, Fanaticism, and Digital
An Interview with Slavoj Zizek
Reality:
64
Geert Lovin k
73
Panic Quake Servers
Frank Lagz
Captain
74
Kirk Was Never the Original
Alan Shapiro
Net Politics
Infobahn
84
Blues
Robert Adrian
X
Digital Humanism:
The Processed World
Arthur
of Marshall
Kroker
The Cybernetic
89
McLuhan
I
Delirium
of Norbert
Wiener
114
Stephen PfohL
Cybernetic
Delirium:
Two Remixes
132
/ace Ckzyton & Sasha Costanza-Chock
Zapatistas: The Recombinant
Ricarh
Hyperreal
Dominguez
Serbia
Aleksanahr
Berlusconi
Movie
135
.
143
Boskovic
is a Retrovirus
145
Lorenzo Mi’lioli
Notes for CTHEORY
Hakim
Growing
David
152
Bey
Old with Negroponte
Cook
156
Digital Delirium
Net Game Cameo
Deena Weinstein and Michael A. Weinstein
vii
159
Memetic Flesh
166
Memetic Flesh in Cyber-City
The Nanotech Future:
A Digital Conversation with BC Crandall
168
Requiem
fitby Acker
174
Conceiving Ada
Lynn Hersbman Leeson
182
Extended-Body:
An Interview with Stelarc
Paolo Atzori and Kirk Woolford
194
Debauching the Digitalis
Sue Golding
200
Bring the Noise
John N&o
203
Camcorder: Deluxe Titles Suck Optical
John N&o
Coitus
212
Augustine of Epcot
Daniel R. White
Where Do Angels Hang in the Cybernet
Michael Dartnell
CyberAntarctic:
An Interview with Knowbotics
Paolo Atzori
209
Nineties?
219
Discovering
Research
232
.. .
VIII
Digital Delirium
Global Algorithm
Tokyo Must Be Destroyed
Ken HoLLings
241
Stalking the UFO Meme
Richard Thierne
253
Transmitting Architecture:
Marcos Novak
The Transphysical
City
260,
Media Archaeology
Siefiied Zielinski
272
Fonts and Phrasing
Alexander Galloway
284
The Aesthetics of Virtual Worlds:
Report from Los Angeles
Lev Manovich
288
Deregulation/Globalisation:
The Loss of Cultural
Bern bard Serexbe
301
Diversity?
The Technology Of Uselessness
Critica L Art Ensemble
306
Contributors
315
Digital Delirium
Arthur and Murilouise Kroker
Speed Delirium
FastTrip to SlowSuicide
Slow down for a fast trip on a slow ride to suicide. Gone through
every fashion look in the video book: grunge, preppy, rapper, raver,
extreme, street. Worn my Tommy, Ralph, and Calvin, A/X, XS, and
all the rest. Eaten every fast food a million times. Heard every song.
Seen every scene. God’died, and sex is dead. No place to pierce. No
body to hide. No drug to take. No word to read. No poetry to sing.
It’s a slow ride to suicide.
Slow Media
Image the world,
but understand
nothing.
The real can no longer keep up to the speed of the image. Reality
shudders and collapses and fragments into the vortex of many different alternative realities: some cybernetic, some designer, some residual, some an outmoded stock of the vanishing real.
Today, things have speeded up to inertia.
Speed economy, but slow jobs. Speed images, but slow eyes. Speed
finance, but slow morality. Speed sex, but slow desire. Speed globalization, but slow localization. Speed media, but slow communication.
Speed talk, but no thought.
Image vectors entrap us, entrance us, and disappear us in an electronic labyrinth of the red sky night.
X
Digital
Delirium
The Slow Mirror of Speed
we have not escaped and will never overcome the fatal destiny of the
law of reversal.. . the faster the tech, the slower the speed of
thought. . . the more accelerated the culture, the slower the rate of
social change.. . the quicker the digital decomposition,
the slower the
political reflection.. . the more apparent the external speed, the more
speed and anxious slowness..a
real the internal slowness.. . d e1’rrious
’
split reality.. . accelerating digital effects are neutralized by
deaccelerating special human effects . . . digital reality spins out of
control, human reality slow-burns back to earth.. . speed bodies and
slow vision. . . speed flesh and slow bones.. . speed web and slow
riot.. . the slow mirror of speed
Body Delirium
It might be a slow ride to suicide but it’s a fast trip to digital delirium.
Remember when you were a kid and you first heard the story. that
everyone was born with a double, a twin? If you were like us, you
probably daydreamed about finding your double in a far off exotic
land.
Recently, we were thinking about the childhood myth of finding your
double while watching a French television documentary
on twins. In
particular, there was one set of female twins who talked evocatively
about the constant 3-D mirror imaging of themselves, where every
beauty and imperfection,
every lump and line, was magnified one
hundred times in stereoscopic imagery. Each twin was a living mirror
to the other, with a biological need to see. A closed circle of two,
always dressing the same, always sleeping in the same bed, always
sharing the same lover, like a nerve connection benveen two bodies
that could be one; even answering the phone with “It is us.”
The twins talked with real emotion about the special pleasure that
came with touching one another’s skin, a pleasure they didn’t experience with the same intensity when touching their own skin, and
never when touching someone else. As they explained, touching one
another’s skin was like touching your own, only better.
Twinness was their being.
Digital Delirium
xi
Sound familiar? Think about the most avant-garde of computer
hackers wearing digital gear as part of the body apparatus, feeling a
twinness with the machine - an overriding need not to be a machine
but to be twinned with one., Digital twins with mirrored identities for
a time when digital reality can be your twin, a long lost, but for that
matter always desperately sought out electronic double in the digital
vortex. Like those hackers at MIT’s Media Lab involved in the “Body
Net” project: actually externalizing the electro-magnetic
field of the
body only to better mirror themselves electronically with a digital
Other. Not skin on skin, but skin on synthetics. Or those other
extropians and futurists and uploaders who are determined to interface human flesh with digital reality - heads as passive terminals for
virtual cellular telephones, hands embedded with electronic bank
cards, DNA as a living computer matrix. It has always been assumed
that computer hackers - cyberboys - have been motivated by a
strong desire to dump human flesh, to mutate their skin, taking
autistic shelter in an electronic homeland of their own creation.
But we don’t think this is true, or, even if it is, it is certainly incomplete, and not complex enough to capture the mythical, even psychoanalytical processes, involved in inventing the digital future. In the
same way that the French twins abandoned individual identity in
favor of a life of the doubled Other, the digital uploader has found his
double in the electronic womb. In the electronic mirror, digital and
human reality have been twinned: the interface is complete between
human and synthetic identity
Or, as hackers involved
in the Body Net project like to say: “It is us.”
“Now We Are Alone in the Wires”
It’s a Quake kind of day in San Francisco and we’re taking our retrofitted bodies to an interactive art installation at Limn’s, a cool 50s
going on 2030 furniture store in SoMa, which in that perfect hybrid
wave cdming off the coast today doubles as cyber-city’s hippest multimedia arts site.
“Dig It: Digital Art - The Next Generation” has been advertised as
“art produced in the cyberstudios of Multimedia
Gulch.” One instal-
xii
Digital Delirium
lation in particular immediately catches our attention. It’s titled
brokenBot,
and it’s a perfect tech-trash counter-gradient
digging its
way like a digital bur against the antiseptically confined rows of
computer art all around the white-on-white
walled room. BrokenBot
is visual cybermayhem,
a kind of mutating video/sound
arcade from
hell. A series of amputated, flickering screens minus their cosmetic
housing are clumped at strange angles on a broken welded metal
table, thick rows of black wires snake out of what looks like the rusted
remains of an undersea diver’s helmet, dirty fuse boxes blink on and
off randomly, dusty circuit boards thick with mud slither in space, a
wierdly out-of-place smell of black paint and gas fumes burns its way
into your lungs, and this whole end-of-millennium
scene of media
debris for the time after communication
is webbed together by violent images. Filmed executions - a shiver, shake and quiver - smell
the gas and feel the bolts of electricity as real bodies gasp for a last
breath, while bleeding out of the double-looped
green and red/orange
screens. A perfect tabernacle for the burned-out flesh and cynical
nerves of the brokenBot body. In digital art, the next generation can
Digital Delirium
be tomorrow or could have been yesterday. BrokenBot
yesterday site to a tomorrow space. The accompanying
perfectly the spirit of terminal amputations:
“’
XIII
mutates from a
text catches
technology victim (eyes her) generational consumption. child torn to
shreds digitized reprocessed marketed sold. breeds commercially viable
product demographic. soviphobia pushes child from planet and back.
now we are alone in the wires.
A few days later, we follow the trail of brokenBot to the cyber-home
of its artistic creators, just down the street from the now abandoned
original site of Wiredmagazine,
which has taken flight with the
chi-chi cocktail, jitterbugging,
Hollywood glamor on my mind set to
the twilight side of SoMa. It turns out that brokenBot was created by
a brilliant group of artists from Construct, a breakout Web design
company. Painters, architects, software designers, musicians, writers,
3D visionaries: Construct is a cyber-guild for the digital Renaissance.
We’re talking to the artists/hackers, observing cold, shadowless images
of impossible spatial perspectives, 3D flesh, and dark comic strip-like
visual desert homages to the spirit of Max Ernst after the shockwave,
when we smell the familiar brokenBot scent of black paint and gas
fumes. So we check under the table, and sure enough, there’s the
debris from the brokenBot installation. A really perfect digital aesthetic: art as a broken mirror of life in the ruins of media debris.
Digital figure one day, digital (junk) ground the next.
Life as brokenBot,
alone in the,wires.
Media Delirium
In the 9Os, there is no medium, and there certainly is no message.
We’re living in the eclipse of the mass media. And why? Because a
medium of communication
implies reciprocity, exchange and a
minimal degree of interaction. Mass media have never been about
reciprocity, exchange, interaction, or even communication.
They
replace reciprocity with false simulation, exchange with the tyranny of
information
overload producing a numbed culture that shuts down
for self-protection,
interaction with a dense operational network
xiv
Digital
Delirium
subsituting polls and focus groups and high-intensity
marketing
warfare for genuine human solidarity, data for communication,
and
speed for meaning.
In the modern era, we were specialists, trapped in private identities.
In the hypermodern
era, identity goes public. It gets netted and
webbed and digitally nested. Today, the hyperreal body, the’
hypermedia body, travels in exactly the way that McLuhan predicted:
lighter than an astronaut, but at an accelerated speed. The Web is the
digital mirror that reflects back to our nomadic bodies its fate as it is
externalized in a world of artificial intelligence, recombinant
genes,
and spliced data streams. As the spectre that haunts the vanishing of
mass media, the Web is our privileged window onto the 3d millennium.
A dream of pure operationality
- transparent, fluid, circulhiing, a
smooth semiurgy of data flows, digital reality is haunted by its own
approaching catastrophe. Digital reality wants to impose the positive
law of the Code, but human reality will not be denied. Human reality
always contains a hidden, but powerful, reflex towards the Tejection of
the Code. A violent and primitive impulse of rejection that works less
by open refusal than by excess, parody, and delirious intensity.
Digital Futures, Slow Suicide, 30 Cyber-Days in San Francisco, Net
Politics, Memetic Flesh and the Global Algorithm:
these are natural
antibodies secreted by the cyber-body as ways of protecting itself
against the sterility of dead digital codes. And ironically, digital reality
requires this moment of excess for its very survival. But, as in ancient
myth, by absorbing the anti-codes of Net reality, by drinking deeply
of this song of slow suicide and delirious speed, digital reality only
hastens its own disappearance.
/
Web Delirium
SeveredNets
There is another Net world: less visible, hidden from easy access,
spiralling outwards in the digital archipelago like floating webs of
glimmering vectors. Severed nets, populated by a global community
of experimental media artists, techno-theorists,
net activists, and
-
Digital
Delirium
xv
android writers. Take a voyage on the free side of the Web, and you
might just run across some of these wanderers. Like yesterday, when
we received a cryptic note from Shu Lea Cheang asking for the URL
for Taiwan Data Heaven, saying that it might provide a thread to
memories of a lost homeland. When we wrote back saying that
Taiwan Data Heaven (http://www.ctheory.
corn/) was cyber-fiction,
she replied: “maybe not.” And gave us a thread of her own to Elephant
Cage Butterfly Locker (http://ec4.edu.u-ryukyu.ac.jp/radarweb/),
a
web site linking Tokyo, Okinawa, and the Internet in a thousand
poles of repressed memory.
Okinawa project
artist in residence: shu lea cheang
“Radarweb”
site artists: sawad brooks + beth stryker
“Elephant Cage Butterfly Locker”
project shift sites among
Okinawa, Tokyo and the
Internet. A “Radarweb” ic
created tracing the remains of
memory.
This project borrows the radar
detect central Elephant Cage
(nickname for US Sobe
communications in Yomitan
Village, Okinawa) as memo-data
processing site.
,
19.5% of Okinawa island is
Leased out to US military bases
enforced by Japan? Central
government. Okinawa is being
developed as a subtropical resort
complete with its own species
of butterjlies. Okinawa people
believe that butterflies guide
souls to heaven. Butterflies
jamming; butterflies tracing
memo-data.
xvi
.
Digital Delirium
As Nietzsche intimated, the Web has a skin and that skin has a
memory: it’s Elephant Cage I3utterfly Locker. Reappropriating
the
visual iconography of the radar web installed by the US military in
Okinawa, Elephant Cage Butterfly Locker tells the story of colonization suffered by Okinawans under the delirious pressure of the war
machine. Stories of rapes and murders and official indifference and
ecological genocide, Elephant Cage Butterfly Locker is a pole of
resistance. Using the radar technology of the war machine against
itself, this is one multimedia
art project that transforms itself into a
pole of memory: a Web butterfly “jamming, tracing memo:data.”
www.ctheory.com
:
Digital Delirium is CTHEORY:
a mutating web site and ascii listserv
for bleeding together the critical edges of theory, technology and
culture.
Everyday when the sun comes up over China Basin Landing in San
Francisco, when cold digital winds blast the streets of Montreal, when
guns and knives are silent for the moment in Sarajevo, and ‘when
pirate hackers band-talk from. Amsterdam to Vienna and Bucharest,
CTHEORY
webs the globe, radiating back to its net readers a continuously updated media analysis. Theory from the academy without
walls, where the very best cyber-philosophers
today are standing on
street corners in the middle of daily protests in Belgrade with wireless
communication
systems strapped to their heads rapping out an eventscene for instant transmission to a waiting CTHEORY
global community.
A mutating theory-net: Jean I3audrillard vivisecting the 90s; Paul
Virilio speaking about cyberwar, god and television, R.U. Sirius
reflecting on how it’s better to be inspired than wired, Slavoj Zizek
meditating on the cultural politics of Japan and Slovenia, dispatches
from hyperreal Serbia, event-scenes from the Zapatistas, reports from
the virtual body wars of Los Angeles.
With CTHEORY,
a new intellectual community
is born in hyperreal
mode. Sci-fi writer Bruce Sterling, mech poet John Nbto, ejrtraordinary fiction writer Kathy Acker, pioneering electronic artist, Lynn
-
Digital
Delirium
xvii
Hershman Leeson, pulp theorist Sue Golding, and theory-fiction
writers Stephen Pfohl and Lorenzo Miglioli levitate right off the page,
writing cypherfunk, hyper-poems, philosophy, soliloquys, and librettos.
Siegfried Zielinski writes of ancient dreams and medieval cyber-art
while computer programmers diagnose the star trekking of physics.
Episcopalean priests stalk the UFO meme. Architects track the
transphysical city. Hackers splice and rupture the cyber-delirium
of
Norbert Wiener. Others theorize the importance of “fonts and phrasing” as a new way of digital seeing, technologies of uselessness,
whether Tokyo must be destroyed, or should we grow old with
Negroponte? CTHEORY
is a digital site where net games, panic
quakes, and nanotech futures light up the darkening sky. An explosion of intellectual creativity - liquid and critical and diverse announcing the surfacing of the Web as a new hypermedia of
(dis)communication.
Refusing tech hype and rubbing theory against digital culture,
CTHEORY
brings together Silicon Valley engineers, electronic
artists, nano-scientists, computer entrepreneurs, fiction writers,
journalists, political, social and cultural theorists, Web Masters, and
cyber-researchers in multimedia research institutes from Cologne and
Tokyo to Paris, Milan and San Francisco. Moving between print and
Web realities, Digital Delirium intensifies cyber-reality by allowing
electronic writing to break the surface of print.
CTHEORY
theorizes in, of, for, and sometimes against the Web, and
reports back to the world in the cold type of Digital Delirium.
Cold print for a cool millennium.
. ..
xv111
Digital Delirium
Digital Renaissance
There is a new renaissance in the making:
hypermodern
digital.
not medieval analog but
After the long sleep of modernism, the creative imagination dreams of
coded castles in the air, opens its virtual eyes, and gets to work rewriting the digital world. Now, the future is flash-forwarded
into the
present: a convulsive recoding of digital reality where the essence of
new codes is internalized, retheorised, mutated, and wetwired. Theory
in the datastorm.
/
That’s Digt’tal Delirium: an upsurge of virtual writers who with every
molecule, breath and synapse spark of cyber-imagination
rethink life
as it has never been known, but has been actually lived. Today, tech
reality, like clonal engineering, genetic resequencing of DNA, copyrighting the human species, and tissue engineering, accelerates beyond tech ethics. Tech has taken a big hit’on the central nervous
system. But now, bunker time for the self-protection
of the human
species is over. The digital renaissance begins by retelling the story of.
life in the code exits of cloning, architecture, poetry, sci-fi, fiction,
politics, robotic engineering, and science.
With
vision, the androids flourish.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Michael Boyle for his invaluable help as
listserv manager for CTHEORY
as well as editorial assistant for
Digital Delirium. His work has been indispensable for the project,
and, in our estimation, Michael is a real model of a digital theorist,
combining great craft knowledge of the Net with an intense commitment to the highest standards of intellectuality.
CTHEORY’s
web site
is made possible through the globally appreciated voluntary work of
Carl Steadman, who links forward-edge digital knowledge with
intellectual commitment.
Arthur Kroker’s contribution
to Digital Delirium was facilitated by a
research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada.
Going directly to the fabled origin of the so-called
information highway, DigitWDeliriumwrites the streetsof
San Franciscoas a way of talking about the ambiguous
legacy of wired culture.
30 Cyber-DaysinSanFrancisco
Arthur und Mwilouise Kroker
Singing the Blues in Cyber-City
Chaos time. It’s 6:30 p.m. on Market Street in San Francisco, just down the
way from the Virgin Megastore. Business people are fleeing homeward, office
towers are shutting dotin, security guards and cleaners are moving in, coffee shops
and stores are locking up their doors, and smokers hurry by, lighting up first
cigarettes since the afternoon break.
There are no street people in cyber-city, but there are plenty in SR They
might occupy different worlds, but when chaos time comes, when it’s that dusky
cusp between light and dark, between cyber-city at work and SF at evening play,
sometimes, just sometimes, the two populations meet.
Like on the corner of Powell and Market, we hear a blast from the pre-MTV
past. Hard drivin’ 60s R&B tunes are being played by a guy who looks like Fats
Domino and sounds like him too, putting down a heavy beat on a set of rusty blue
drums, singing with a deep bass voice that puts into song the wail of America that
has traveled from the plantations of the southern delta to the slaughterhouses of
Chicago, and met futureshock in SF, this city at the end of the western continental
migration of the body. He’s got two sidemen, both sitting on speakers, the car
battery for their electric guitars inside a white plastic garbage can.
A compact, wired guy steps up front and yells: “Just tell the story, brother, tell
the story, tell the story, tell the story.. .” Th ere was something about the music that
Digital
Delirium
3
just pumped the cynicism right out of the air. And it did tell the story. All of
America was there: punks with torn Misfits and Fugazi T-shirts, a homeless white
guy with an enormous hunting knife in an aluminum taped scabbard in his back
pocket, somebody just to our side is drinking limegreen alcohol straight out of the
bottle, a guy with a Cherokee Nation sweatshirt circles around the band, pulls a
harmonica out of his pack and begins to play along, the shopping crowd carrying
parcels from Macy’s and Armani and GAP put their purchases down and listen,
and, all the while, those gigantic posters from Virgin of k.d. lang and Tony Bennett
look down on us from their multimillion
dollar high-in-the-sky
window perches.
But it doesn’t really matter. Because for one twilight moment the American
song is on the streets of SF, a kind of swirling charged-air energy vector that sweeps
its way into your belly and your mind and your eyes, takes you suddenly to places
sad and sorrowful and beautiful, and you stand there at this street scene, knowing
that for one moment the continent has truly ended here, that it is the end of the
road. Now, this is an old story that has been told again and again, in the founding
myths of the country, in film, in music, in videos, in idle chatter, and sometimes
even in writing. All the energies of the continental American migration are pushed
up against the blue sheen of the Pacific. It’s as if the massively shifting tectonic
plates far under the ground with their eleven fault lines crisscrossing the Bay Area
have their fleshly equivalent in the streets of cyber-city. And sometimes, just
sometimes, the body plates rub up against the end of the continent just a bit too
hard, all that pent-up, screwed down pressure inside the street bodies looks for an
opening, an unstable fault line, and when it finds one, the result is a shuddering
music quake. Like this dirt-poor outlaw street band. It has exited normal space, the
space of SF that Jack Kerouac once described as a “police state.” It’s a kind of open
fault line through which all the rage and the anger and the sorrow and the ecstasy of’
a street society at the end of the road, explodes out of rasping mouths and rusty
drums and beat-up Fender guitars.
The R&B sound is a big rumble at the end of the continent, and so when the
band flips into Otis Redding’s Dork of tb< Bay with the words: “I left my home in
Georgia.. . Headed for the Frisco Bay.. . Got nothing to live for ‘cause nothin’s been
going my way,” we can just feel the keening of the words inside our skin, and when
Fats cuts the words down to the naked-edge line of “Nothin’ to live for.. . Nothin’
to live for.. . Nothin’ to live for,” which he rasps over and over again like a mantra
of the dead, we know that we have mutated beyond music, and are present at a
dirge, SF style: end of the continent, end of the road, end of the body, end of life,
end of hope. It’s just that moment when a song becomes lament, and the city streets
are a dance of the dispossessed.
Sound crazy? Maybe. But everyone on that dusky corner, punks and grunge
and rockers and homeless women and too-poor-to-be-just-down-and-out-guys
and
destroyed bodies and digital faces and panhandlers pleas and salaried smiles and
AMA conventioneers straight out of the “internal medicine” show at the Hyatt just
down the street, and alcoholics, and tourists and of&e workers - all the demented
and the happy and the sad and the lonely and the tired and the frenzied and the
dead - just everyone fell into a common magical spell. You could just see it register
.
Digital
Delirium
in body rhythms. Street people began to dance, sometimes fell down hard on their
asses but clawed their way back up to air again, punks dropped the Misfits alienzone stare for a brief moment, and even the tourist folks just couldn’t leave, and just
wouldn’t leave, and just didn’t leave. For one brief instant, we were listening to
those silent tectonic plates shifting inside of our deep-down feelings, really hearing
R&B on the hard luck streets of SF as the intense, ancient song of lament that it
was always meant to be.
In the usual way of things, all this led to a no-time time and to a no-place
place. The darkness came and the group of pilgrims on a dusky street corner in
cyber-city dropped some quarters in the box and went their separate ways.
Red’sJava House
Down on the San Francisco Bay along The Embarcadero, there is a place
called Red’s Java House. It’s right across the wharf from the Jeremiah O’Brien, the
last of the Liberty ships, and just down the way from a sidewalk plaque commemorating the “Lost Ghost Ship: Lydia.” Lost, that is, because its remains have been
buried forty feet beneath The Embarcadero, probably along with some tourists,
since the last earthquake.
So it’s a sunny day in California and we’re sitting outside Red’s Java House.
The kind of place where the food is so bad and the bird shit’s so heavy, it makes you
want to puke. The longshoremen
have fled long ago, and now it’s been taken over
by the khaki crowd and the Silicon set looking for a bit ofTrue Grit. But not just
techie bodies. Retro Hell’s Angels are steady customers, a pickup truck for construction workers wheels in, complete with a bumper sticker that reads “Workers in the
USA are best when they say Union Yes,” guys with dreadlocks and Oakleys, bike
messengers poured into data suits studded with digital comm-gear, ex-CEOs, from
what the SoMa crowd calls “Multi-Media
Gulch,” slipstreaming their Chili Dogs
and wondering whimsically where it all went wrong, a teal-haired woman in a blue
leather US Highway 101 jacket, retired couples, and there’s even some bunko artists
in the corner cashing in their chips.
Red’s Java House was really hopping that day: lunch-time
crowd pigeon
roosting, tooling Buds and vacuum-eating
cheeseburgers. In the noonday sun, my
body might be in San Francisco, but my thoughts are with the Germans. I’m
reading Heidegger’s essay on anxiety, looking, I suppose, for a philosophical
encryption chip to the malaise of the hyper-media mind. And it’s a curious thing.
Heidegger says that anxiety is about. confronting
nothingness. I don’t bother to
think that one through, but feed Heidegger’s insight directly to my stomach
neurons, probably to get a quick take on what my eating intelligence has to say
about the relationship between anxiety and nothingness.
Now crazy-ass seagulls, pure Clorox white, are circling in the air, cheeseburgers are being lazily chomped all around me, the Red’s Java crowd is at that edge of
late morning tiredness and lunch-time happiness, and I know, I just know, that
Digital
Delirium
5
Heidegger is wrong. It’s not nothingness that people are afraid of, at least the
California crowd down on The Embarcadero, but just the opposite. What really
hardwires the anxiety gene directly into the California cellular structure is not
nothingness, but hyperactivity. Always having something to do like an ulcer-weight
coming down heavy on your mind, and your body is rattled tight, and you can’t
walk except at a trot with face muscles pulled taut, and running shoes with your
working clothes that you don’t really want to wear, and you’re on the run baby run
treadmill at the high tech street level display-window
gym speeding to nowhere; but
time is money, appearance is everything, and you just can’t afford to miss that nifty
power walk up and down San Francisco Bay. Gogol’s “dead souls” as 90s repressed
young professionals. And not just the Silicon boys and girls either, but everybody in
San Francisco has gotten into the act: the suits on Market Street put on hypermedia
flesh to autodoc every morning at their cyber-work stations, homeless guys along
the Bay do hard-edge military style calisthenics, complete with one-arm pushups
with legs suspended three-feet off the air on park fencing, the Ferry building is a
fast vector blast of cyber-muscle rolling in from the night-time dreamworld
of
Marin county, and there’s not a word spoken here that’s not a paean to promotional
culture with a capital l? But then again, maybe Heidegger is right. Maybe the
anxious self reaches pitch velocity running from nothingness, and really loving it.
Red’s Java House is about as close to Heidegger’s nothingness as you’re going
to get on this side of God’s green acre. It’s the kind of place where the Bay is on
your mind, the sun is in your skin, and you’re sitting there with a Bud and a
cheeseburger and your cool shades tucked in tight. But your thoughts have drifted
away to that quiet place we all have inside us where the horizon narrows down to a
beautiful circle, where life and love and worries and just plain lunch-time eating
vector together into a forget-me-not
kind of day. If Heidegger could have just done
some writing at Red’s Java House, I’m pretty sure that he’d want to rethink nothingness. And why? Because in California, the hypermedia body has already blasted
through to the other side of nothingness, to that crazy edge of end-of-the continent
energy cut with a little earthquake hysteria, where what’s really desirable is the panic
anxiety that comes from riding the abyss, just between hyper-stress and flat-ass
inertia. Lazy days are here again, I’m OK and so are you, as long as you’re not in
San Quentin. Hedonism, San Francisco style.
In California, nobody fears nothingness. It’s what people eat for lunch, and in
San Francisco they get it every day, for the price of a True Grit cheeseburger and a
Bud at Red’s Java House.
Digital
Delirium
Digital Dustbowl: Squatting On the
Dock of the Bay
In San Francisco, you don’t have to look far to find the surplus class. Just go
down to the old dry dock area, the one that used to hustle with all the sounds and
sights of thousands of blue-collar workers repairing ships’ conveyor lines, and you
will suddenly find yourself exiting the glitzy world of SF gussying up for the
millennium,
and quick-time entering a surreal world of nomadic bodies and live-in
campers squatting on the dock of the Bay. Every night when the sun goes down and
the San Francisco cops come up, the squat comes alive with the survival tales of the
surplus class living on the physical edge of technotopia, right in sight of the high
finance, high-intensity
money-spangled
sky1ine with its Trans-America
Masonic
architecture.
It’s a strange and surreal world of disappearances: disappeared ships, disappeared labor, disappeared communities.
But in the squat, there’s one thing that
hasn’t vanished, and that’s memory. It’s a real inter-zone of embedded memory,
squatted by people with a story to tell of survivors living on the edge who have beat
the odds, and who might be dumped into surplus flesh by the new technological
elite - the virtual class - but who have learned new labor skills for the end-ofthe-century: laboring, that is, to survive as the vanguard of the disappeared of
America. This is what happens to Marx’s “dead labor” when it starts to speak.
Take Jesus. He’s a tough-ass, mean-thinking
Puerto Rican organic intellectual
married to a French Maoist. With a staccato way of thinking and a blue-collar way
of talking, he puts into words the long-repressed story of the squat. And he’s
unflinching.
“Don’t give me that crap about the so-called War on Drugs. The White
House is the biggest rock house in America.” Or, “If you’re poor and black in
America, you ain’t got no rights. When you’re in the projects, the cops will bust
down your door every night. In the projects, you’re always living with your pants
down.” Or, “What are you going to say to a kid. Stay in school for chump change,
when you could be a high roller starting up your own drug emporium on the street
corner in front of your own home. :In America, the kids that deal aren’t getting
drugs by themselves. We’re talking here about a big distribution
network: banks and
cops and government.”
And then there’s the guy who calls himself the Desert Rat. A black leather
cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes, with the strings pulled taut under his lip just
above a full salt and pepper beard. He’s been living in the squat for a few months,
working out of the back of his truck as a car mechanic. He’s reputed to be the best
auto mechanic in a 50-mile radius of the city. The day we were there, a long line of
Saabs and Corollas and Cherokees, straight from the Valley, were waiting in a long,
snaking line to be diagnosed by the Desert Rat: delivering up their cars for final
judgment - bad timing, burnt-our valves, shocks and struts, clutch and transmission problems, blown electrical fuses, shot computer circuitry, ignition failures,
spitting, misfiring pistons. Now, most of the year, the Desert Rat spends his time
,
Digital
Delirium
7
wallfing barefoot in the Sonora Desert. He tells us his stpry sitting behind the wheel
of hu truck, drinking skim milk straight out of the carton, all the while listening to
Jesus and nodding his head in assent. Then he adds: “I first came to SF in 68.
Couldn’t afford an apartment then, and sure can’t afford one now.”
This is a squat, California style: vehicle-oriented,
perfectly nomadic, an
interzone, where you can turn on the ignition, and leave at a moment’s notice. In
America, property is king, and nothing much has changed here. It could be a
waterfront, picture window on the bay, suburb for the surplus class: Except it’s not.
It’s got all the pain and the memory of people who have been pushed out of the
system, and who have done the next best thing, becoming the lonely coyotes of the
surplus class. Refusing service work, they are the last and best of the independent
workers: living off the land, re-skilling their labor, prophets of the future of bluecollar work in the American digital dustbowl.
Remake Millennium
The
99 Year
Phone
Call
Did you see the clip on the news the other night about the so-called “crisis in
the computer industry ?” According to the hype, laid-back programmers in the 60s
(probably under the influence of psychedelics) made a big coding error. Never
suspecting that they were writing code for the millennium,
they entered two-digit
dates instead of four into the internal system-operating
instructions of computers.
This was thought to be a really groovy digital compression idea at the time. Until,
that is, cyber-culture slammed into the vector wall of the Year 2000. As the TV
doomsday anchor explained with smiling teeth: “Make a long-distance phone call
one minute before the millennium
and hang up one minute after, and receive for
your two minute phone call a 39 year telephone bill.” Unable to recognize the four
digits in the 3d millennium,
computers will do the next best thing. When in doubt,
go remake and head straight back for the Year 1900 and do the 20th century
(digitally) all over again. And it’s kind of perfect. Just listen to all those bankers and
computer CEO’s who flash onto the screen, talking in earnest cyber-Red Scare
terms about the “potential”
600 bill’ ion dollar cost to business to change a few
digits, or the “I dunno, don’t blame me” government spokesman who says that
we’re cyber-sunk as a nation: it’s four digits or bust; or the insurance executives with
worried faces who speak of changing 1.6 million dates in time for the millennium.
But we’re TV news scare-proofed. We know that this is all fake, that coding today is
all auto-pilot stuff, that there is some hacker somewhere, probably inspired by this
news report and with digital dreams galore of Netscape and Yahoo! in her mind,
who is already putting down code to bring the lost in space cyber-millennium
safely
back to earth.
But maybe it’s something else. Perhaps this news report doesn’t have anything
to do with money at all, but is a powerful metaphor for fear of the millennium.
8
Digital
Delirium
Confronted
by all the structural changes and seismic shifts brought on by the
digital ~OS, the fearful computer has an anxiety attack, quickly flipping from a
cyber-aggressor of time to an historian of time past. Remake coding for a remake
culture for a remake millennium.
And why not? Computers have feelings too, and
like a kitten that fails to make a jump, falls back to earth with a crash, and starts to
lick itself furiously because it’s embarrassed, computers sometimes go to ground in
the past as a way of distracting attention from future fear. And so do we.
That’s why it’s the remake millennium.
As the Year 2000 gets closer, the
recycle cycle is more intense. Remake cinema, remake songs, remake music eras,
remake Martini lunches and cocktail chatter, remake cigars, remake fashion, remake
faces, remake politics, remake suburbia. The more things are front-loaded
by future
pressure, the more society reaches into the grab-bag of the past, and spews out lame
remakes and flat-line memes and mutant recombinant images. Under the hyperstress of a future of seismic shifts and radical structural changes and new technologies and new ways of digital understanding,
culture retreats to the remake bunker.
Not as McLuhan predicted when he said that old technologies have one last
function as content for the invisible form of new technologies, but something much
more politically perverse. The remake millennium
is closer to Nietzsche’s aphorism
“Let the Dead Bury the Living.” New technologies seem to entail a big drop in
human creativity, and a vast increase in the pleasure of mass repetition. The
“maggot man” is everywhere.
And it’s killing us: 50s suburbs become the racially and class segregated
privatized gated communities of the 90s; American rugged individualism
comes
back as Montana Freemen and private right-wing, gun-toting
militias; First Amendment rights are recycled as libertarian squeals of total non-interference
by government in private life; the 50s organization
man disciplinary ideology returns under
the mantra of “tough love”. Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, Tony Bennett, Sgt. Bilko,
Mod fashion, Bob Dole: 90s culture becomes a mortuary of the dead past and
creepy images and resurrected effects and 3d generation TV series with TV hits as
cinema blockbusters and repeat politics - recycled, recombined, reworked,
respewed.
So, here’s one more recycle. The TV report on the crisis in the computer
industry said that the millennium
“could be a big 0.”
“Could be?” The remake millennium
already is a “big 0.” For remake culture,
that’s the point.
Digital
Delirium
-
9
Yahoo! Capitalism
Yahoo! goes public and its share value zooms to $1.2 billion in a single day.
Touted as one of the big “concept buys” of the 9Os, Yahoo!, like Netscape before it,
has no real value, only virtual value. And in the age of Web economy and digital
production
and multi-media
culture and data infotainment
and convergence
among the vector giants of the new world of global telecommunications,
the only
value in play is virtual value. Psychological perception is everything: virtual value
means that things have value only in relation to the speed of their own disappearance. No longer symbolic capital or scarcity capital, virtual value is about money in
its purely mathematical stage as a global vector, gathering speed and momentum
only in relation to the end of value itself.
And why? Because pan-capitalism
has finally entered the age of virtual
money. Exiting the society of consumption,
refusing the reality constraints of
information
culture, and certainly leaving behind the scarcity values of industrial
economy, pan-capitalism
has gone over fully to the side of virtual exchange-value.
* Virtual exchange-value is time after money, when value goes supernova and in a
final brilliant implosion breaks the referential link between value and production,
code and solvency-principle,
use-value and exchange-value. Time after money is
neither about use nor exchange, but represents the end of utility and the eclipse of
exchange. Today, economic vectors acquire value only to the extent that they
implode beyond the inertial weight of use-value, and go terminal on the question of
value in exchange. Vector economy - the post-production
economy of time after
money - is allergic to usefulness and hostile to exchange. Time after money wants
only its own death. It wants to witness the disappearance of money into literature,
to be present when pan-capitalism
finally goes parodic, when capitalism becomes a
satirist of its own exhaustion of value.
Consequently, the name Yahoo!. That’s capitalism as the master of ceremonies
at its own worldwide financial roast where the point is to reverse value, to praise by
abuse, to honor by contempt, to affirm by the joke. Yahoo! capitalism, then, for a
millennial culture where money is pure virtuality, pure disappearance, pure perception, pure speed, pure death, pure mockery.
In the digital economy of vectors and speeds and slownesses, things have
determinate value only in relation to the end of value. We are also living in the
twilight period of time after value. Beyond (popular) consciousness, beyond
(strategic) control, beyond (modernist) rationality, time after value is understandable only in terms of the ancient language of alchemy where things are interesting
only to the degree that they are chimerical and effervescent and liquid. Like Yahoo!,
a “search engine,” without real value for a society in search of the meaning of virtual
value.
10
Digital
Delirium
Triumphant
in its victory over all the old referents, from consumption
and
information
and production to scarcity value, pan-capitalism
is confident enough to
play a joke on itself, and perhaps on us. Reviving the medieval tradition of the court
jester, it lets us into the vernacular secret of capitalism in its (post)-symbolic
stage.
Yahoo! It’s time after money.
ReBoot
Or, maybe it’s the opposite. Perhaps virtual capitalism can’t stand its own
terminal speed, begins to shudder shock at its own future as a pure vectoi far from
the comforting shore of consumption
value, and, like everybody else in the convulsive 9Os, panics at the digital wildness within. That would explain the magical
attraction of the name Yahoo!. A “concept buy” alright for a panic capitalism that
begins to clue in to its own terminal future in time after capitalism and heads for
the security of the most ancient of all referents, for the library, for a “digital search
engine,” as a way of making (narrative) sense of it all.
Yahoo! for prospecting dikital gold.
30 Smoke-FreeDays in California
Zero Tolerance
I’m driving through the Sacramento Valley, listening to bible belt preachers
on the radio cut with some patches of harp rap, thinking of Foucault in his Death
Valley days, and smoking a Camel. Suddenly, a California State Trooper on his
tech-customized
Harley pops his flashing light and pulls me over. Fourteen antennas reaming from his Bladerunner helmet, no shades ‘cause he’s wearing contact
lenses encrypted with the American flag, and with his left cheek tattooed, “It’s all in
the Good Book,” the trooper pulls his sun-baked beef off the bike, stoops to wipe a
speck of Interstate dust from his SM hi-top black leather boots, and steps over my
rent-a-car with that peculiar “It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law” attitude.
I do an instant Catholic examination of (highway) conscience. Haven’t
broken the speed limit, my seat belt’s tucked up tight to my belly, haven’t been
drinking for at least an hour, I’ve got no unconcealed weapons, my blood’s drugfree and my mind is (pretty) pure, and unlike most of the teenage spirits and maybe
some of the agri-business farmers in the Valley, I’m not sky-high on speed and
whacked out on Prozac. I’ve got a cheery smile, an upright face, no cheesecake flesh,
and a life-affirming
attitude and I might be in the California midwest but I still
believe in Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Techno-Culture,
so help me God. But
just to be sure, I reach in my pocket and pull out my rights: I’ve got a 1st amendment mouth, a 4th amendment vehicle, and a constitutional
iron-clad guarantee to
a zone of middle class white boy privacy.
Feeling pretty confident, I pre,ss down my window, and say: “What’s the
problem officer? I haven’t been speeding.”
Digital
Delirium
1I
He answers: “Speed’s got nothing to do with it. Look what you’re holding in
your right hand.”
So I say “Yeah,” as I flick the ash from my Camel.
“Sir, there’s zero tolerance for smoking in this town.”
When I protest, “I’m just driving through,” he hands me a $100 ticket and
says: “I don’t make the law - I just enforce it.” And then, with just a little nod
towards his Presbyterian past, he hands me a nicotine patch and smirks: “This
should be enough to get you out of town.”
Digital Angels: Timothy Leary in the
Clouds
May 8,1996
At the end of the evening, R.U. Sirius tells the story of his last trip to LA to
visit Timothy Leary. Dying of cancer, Leary has already done death one better,
passing over at hyper-speed to the beatific state as the guest of honor at a virtual
wake for a virtual death. A kind of New Orleans auto-da-fe in advance for the wake
Leary will never get to attend, his house is the daily scene of the greatest congregation of American writers and musicians and merry pranksters and spies and AI
recombinants
and hallucinogenic
eyes and friends and foes and hangers-on and
stars and unknowns and networkers and TV anchors and just-released-from-SanQuentin outlaws that this country has ever witnessed. Everybody has come to pay
their virtual respects to one of California’s most courageous, and certainly most
creative, thinkers - to a spirit that passed over long ago to the side of the digital
angels.
But not so fast! Gurgling away in the corner of Leary’s bedroom is a state of
the art 2Ist century full-body cryogenic unit, a beautiful bubbling vat of liquid
nitrogen, accompanied by uniformed deep-freeze attendants ready on quick-time to
snatch Leary’s fading flesh away at the moment of death for the big cryo-heaven in
the sky. Like Walt Disney before him, Leary is contemplating
perpetual life on
permanent reserve as a cryogenized icon, deep frozen, staring out with ice-blue
nitrogen tinted eyes, liquid cooled for life in the 3d millennium.
The twin cryoheads of Disney and Leary: a perfect metaphor of America, united at last in virtual
death.
Just before R.U. Sirius took his virtual leave from the virtual wake for the
virtual death, Leary motioned to the cryo-unit in the corner, winked, and said:
“Hey R.U. -want
to be my roommate?”
12
Digital
Delirium
June 4,1996
In the end, Leary didn’t have to bother with the cryo unit. And why? Because
his image has already been frozen in time, preceding his virtual death with a
precession of virtual memories. And if he could mutter “Why not?” at that fateful
moment, that’s because he was a real mystic, American style.
Out There Havin’ Fun in the Warm
California Sun
R. U. Sirius
California is the dissipating structure of analytic logic replaced by magick as
mediated by engineering. Three feet off the ground and rising, the rest of the world
rests its weary chin on our shores, gazing upwards. Critiquing.
Swooning. Wishing
it could come here to surf the silicon waves, fuck the silicone babes, or be swallowed
up in some Mansonoid blood-red neon desert.
Reporters come and go. They find an adolescent 75-year-old philosopher
king preparing to have his head cut off and preserved on ice. But before going, he
would like you to know that “when the nervous system can be used at Einsteinian
relativistic speeds, the passive limitations of the nervous system itself become
apparent.”
California is on the edge of a tremendous nervous breakthrough.
Some of
you are jealous.
European and eastern bohemians could never really embrace the psychedelic
experience. It’s not history that haunts them so much as the toilet training of
classical education - the structures of credibility. California - INcredible home of
Disneyland, Hollywood,
Silicon Valley, and LSD culture hasn’t merely UNmade
history, it’s flattened time. From our vantage point, we look forward as easily as we
look backwards.
This doesn’t necessarily make us nice or happy. It does tend to make us
permissive, but it can be the permissiveness of a cowboy lynch mob that is mutating
via some mix of tabloid vulgarity an’d mediated sophistication
towards replicating
the international
outlaw occult recklessness personified by the weirdo freaks who
surrounded
Hitler in Germany.
But it doesn’t have to be. From my time zone it’s obvious that we are constructing the digital equivalent of the DMT experience. Soon, all of the information in the universe will be mainlined directly into your nervous system. Trust me
on this. You have a choice. You can either become an information
processing
machine, or you can become an orgasm. In other words, Wiredversus Mondu .ZXXI
- for all eternity.
Digital
Delirium
13
The future, my cultured friends, is the direct interaction between the nervous
system and the information
system. The formerly interior terrain of thought and
memory will be exteriorized. It will begin at our fingertips. Our experiences - far
from being disembodied - will be one of direct bodily reception. The spinal
chord/brain
as antenna.
Don’t be left behind. Here in California, there are many flavors of atavism to
choose from. Look for the one that promises a breakthrough
in the grey room.
Nothing up our sleeves. No strings attached. This is what you’ve been waiting for.
STEP RIGHT Up. YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO MISS THIS!
The View from Butte, Montana
A Responseto Red’sJava House
Put Munduy
Walking the razor edge of hyperactivity
the SF post-moderns don’t fear
nothingness? They fear too much of too much? Then they move to Montana and
give the state a bad name.. .
The view from here is a bit contraire. In old Butte, where the dust blows
heavy with old smelter fallout, hyperactivity revolves around working 3 part-time
minimum wage jobs to feed the kids, learning about the good life from watching
prime-time TV, and trying to fill all your hunting tags by killing deer, elk, antelope,
and moose. The nothingness creeps in. The nothingness is not like the cold feeling
of the ground that creeps through your sleeping bag and into your bones on a 30
below night in the mountains. The cold ground is real. Even if you freeze to death,
at least you know it’s nature’s eloquent way of reaching out to you. The abyss has no
eloquence. It’s a nothingness like the patches of blank screen that appear on your
computer screen during a virus attack. Dead animals, beer, TV, and the fact that
your boss is some high school kid don’t fill no abyss.
The abyss, the nothingness, stems from the utter meaninglessness of your life.
Being nice to some shmuck tourist who’s paying for a bottle of pop with a credit
card. Cheering for your kid who, even if he makes first-string offense, won’t have
any future. Watching some Californicator
build a log mansion on the creek where
your Dad used to take you fishing. You have little control and not many choices.
Control? Tell the manager you think he should order more Coke and less Pepsi.
Choice? Vote for the rich smooth-talking
Democrat guy, or for the rich meanspirited Republican guy
I would guess even the hyperactive silicon info-geeks feel about the same way.
What are they creating with their life? Do they have time after work to play catch
with their sons, or teach their daughters to two-step? Is the only difference between
14
,
Digital
Delirium
them and marginally employed Montanans that they are filling the hole in their life
with a red Porsche and a trophy wife instead of an old Wagoneer and a .270
Winchester? Unfortunately,
they all want to vacation in Montana, in August, when
it seldom snows.
Maybe the Unabomber was right: “It would be better to dump the whole
stinking system and take the consequences.” The Unabomber was mostly talk. He
didn’t do as much harm as the LA Freeway on a good day. And if we believe
evolution, a human individual,
even one who sends bombs in the mail, is just
another stochastic factor, no more purposeful than an avalanche or a hungry grizzly.
Now that really pulls me back from the abyss, the thought that human nature is just
another random and meaningless Darwinian maze-way.
How about Zen? We’re just part of nature, bobbing along on the watercourse
way, so go with the flow.. . But then there are those who insist on building logjams
(or log mansions) in the very spot nature leads me, graphite flyrod in hand.
Hmmm, no political solution to be had there.
Al Borgmann (he’s a philosophy professor in Missoula, but that’s OK;
Missoula isn’t much further from Montana than Butte) believes the essential
problem lies with the impotence of liberalism. Liberals refuse to make judgments
on what constitutes the good life. So, without a goal, we board the train, criticize
one another, and argue about where we have went wrong in the past. Meanwhile,
the train pushes on, further blurring our sense of place, disrupting connections with
community, and accelerating our mental pace, so that it becomes more and more
difhcult to hop off
Have a nice day.
Following the thread of leading cyber-thinkers, Djgifu/
DeliriuminterviewsR.U.Sirius,PaulVirilio, JeanBaudrillard,
and SlavojZizek,and includesa major state of the digital
union addressby sci-fi writer, BruceSterling.
It’s Betterto be Inspired
than .Wired
An Interview with R.U. Sirius
Jon Lebkowsky
Clown
Prince
of the Digital
Counterculture
The evolution of a bohemian, technohip subculture within the vibrant and
elastic digital culture of today was mediated by two important events. One was the
opening of the Internet. The other was the appearance of Mondo 2000.
The early Internet derived much of its ambiance from a strange hybrid of 60s
counterculture
and 80s libertarianism.
MO& 2000, a glossy periodical that evolved
from an earlier neopsychedelic zinc, incorporated
this sociopolitical
sensibility and
blended it with their own peculiar sense of post-punk irreverence, drugged-up
pranksterism, and high style. The result was a new cultural trend, or at least the
media-generated
illusion of one.
It was 1989. Computers were seen as tools of High Geekdom. Mondo,
however, portrayed the new technology as sexy, hip, and powerfUlly subversive. And
as Captain Picard might say, they made it so.
It was Bart Nagel’s unique computer-enhanced
graphic style that pushed
Monh 2Kover the top, making it something of a phenomenon in the early 90s.
However, the real meat was in the cheerfi.dly irreverent exploration of nascent
technoculture
and the evolving computer underground
from the perspectives of the
writers/editors,
whose handles were R.U. Sirius, St. Jude, and Queen Mu. Besides
displaying strangeness and charm, early Monh was the only popular representation
of the hacker ethic, described by author Andrew Ross as “libertarian
and cryptoanarchist in its right-to-know
principles and its advocacy of decentralized knowledge. [It] asserts the basic right of users to free access to all information.
It is a
principled
attempt, in other words, to challenge the tendency to use technology to
form information
elites.” [Zcbnocul’ture 1161
Despite being non-technical,
.Mondo 2000’s original Editor-in-Chief,
the
iconoclastic prankster RU. Sirius, saw clearly the broad implications
of the hacker
ethic and incorporated
it into his bag of tricks. He began hanging out on the
WELL, at that time a little-known
Bay Area conferencing system that attracted
Digital
Delirium
17
writers, hackers, artists, poets, and publishers from all over the world. He started a
topic on Monh 2000 in the Hacking conference on the WELL, which evolved into
the once-vibrant,
now defunct Mondo 2000 conference.
In 1993, Sirius split from Mondo 2000. Since then, he’s contributed
his
increasingly acerbic scribblings to publications ranging from ARTFORUM
Znternational to I%& to fiquire Japan. In 1994, he recorded an unreleased album called,
IOU Babe for Trent Reznor’s Nothing Records with his conceptual-art
rock band
MV Inc. (formerly called Mondo Vanilli). He has also co-authored two books with
St. Jude, Cyberpunk Handbook: the Real Cyberpunk Fakebook (Random House), and
How to Mutate and Take Over the World (Ballantine).
As this interview was completed, Sirius told me about his new website, called
“The Mutate Project”, that includes a public forum on “how to conduct a guerrilla
war against the censorship of the Internet.. . and other stuff.” However Sirius this
may sound, you can bet it’s always somewhat tongue-in-chic.
Mod0
to the Core
Lebkowski: Did Mondo 2000 just cycle out? Or do you think, in a perfect world,
you could’ve held the cultural edge and continued to produce quality content?
R. U. Sirius: Mondo had its moment on the tip of the wave. But I think that a
certain combination
of our editors and art people could have launched the truly
corrosive assault on computer and media culture that was implicit in Monh at its
best. I think it’s silly to chase the edge. It’s much more interesting to explode it.. . as
well as the mainstream. It’s better to be inspired than wired.
Lebkowski: When you’re associated with the neophile fringe there’s that expectation
that you’ll always be remaking reality, though. Finding the next frontier.. .
RU: Right. But I don’t worry so much about the “neophile fringe” or the cult of
newness, believe it or not. I’m more interested in passion and philosophy, sex and
subversion., . you know.. . those old-fashioned values. This macho sort of posturing
about being the fastest, most technohip, way-ahead person around gets really
tiresome. It was sort of funny to me as the Mona% 2000 thing got going that some
people really thought that I should feel ashamed because I’m not an authentic
hacker. Really, who gives a fuck? I’m not an auto mechanic either. I just feel
compelled to do various forms of communication
and make art about the things
that intrigue me.
Lebkowski: It seems that Monh
slam dunking it.
tried to be digital culture while at the same time
RU: Yes! My book How To Mutate & Take Over the World does that also.
HTM&TOWis
both the next stage and my personal kiss off to the so-called
cyberculture.
We were always horribly ambiguous. Even our hortatory, wild-eyed, fauxutopian opening statement from the first issue (which, incidentally, the academic
types insist on keeping in circulation as proof of our naivete), was more an exercise
18
Digital
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in poetic extravagance then something to live and die by. So I rode the Virtual
Reality hype and the smart drugs hype, but I also made a lot of cynical statements
about them. Throughout
the early 9Os, I repeated the line “I’d rather watch Ren
and Stimpy on caffeine than experience virtual reality on smart drugs” in all my
lectures and interviews, to try to detach from excessive identification
with disappointing infant technologies. It’s a very true statement, by the way. But ironic
distance also quickly becomes banal.. . and that spells exhaustion. Let’s not talk
about exhaustion. What can you say, really?
Lebkowski: There have been many rumors about your reasons for splitting
Mondo in 1993. What’s the real, unexpurgated story?
from
RU I split primarily because I wasn’t the one at the controls, and I could feel the
thing spinning out of control and couldn’t do anything about it.
Unless you were inside Mondo, you couldn’t possibly understand what it was
like. Read Alice In Wonderland and the collected works of Kafka as though they
were instruction manuals for how to succeed in business, for starters. I’m not
interested in magnifying the details though. I love everybody involved.
You know, only an absolute nut would have supported and helped to create
Mondo 2000 when it started in 1989 so what the hell. And I’m a complete lunatic
myself so I can only be thankful. I’ve always been through the looking glass.
Cyberpunk:
Threat,
Menace,
or Marketing
Concept?
Lebkowski: Speaking of the past, let’s talk about the c-word. Mondo 2000 was a
focus of a superficial “movement”
that called itself cyberpunk, after the literary
genre. But like Mondo, it seems to be gasping for breath. The sf writers who were
reluctantly responsible for the meme seem kind of relieved. But you released a book
called The Cyberpunk Handbook in 95. What’s your take?
RU Bruce Sterling didn’t want to have anything to do with it when we interviewed
him back in 89. He said he was “taking down the neon sign.”
All labels are just conveniences and anybody who takes them too seriously is a
fool. But the compulsive need to jettison a label might just be one aspect of taking
it too seriously. Does the label help you to communicate a certain aesthetic or a set
of generally held beliefs and attitudes? Are you searching for a new label just
because somebody told you that it wasn’t hip to use this one anymore?
I’m terribly trendy myself. I’m easily pressured by the tyranny of hip. So I had
resolutely forsworn against the use of “cyber” in any form. But then I was offered a
mercenary opportunity
by Random House to assault the cyberpunk concept - in
other words to help write a book called The Cyberpunk Handbook. It was their idea.
I wanted to get the advance for the book and then change the title, but by the time
we got the advance, Jude had written a whole bunch of great stuff about
cyberpunks. And you know, fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.
Digital
Lebkowski: Cyberpunk
was really,just
a marketing
Delirium
19
term from the word go.
RU Art movements usually are. Gibson, Sterling and company saw an opportunity
to market a genre, which is how you move product in a dense media culture. People
need the various classifications and subclassifications to know where to go, because
there’s too much stuff. The cool thing about the cyberpunk genre is that it’s been
pretty elastic. Pat Cadigan, Rudy Rucker, Mondo 2000, ravers, SRL, underground
hackers, Gibson, Leary.. . it provided a pretty big tent for people to hawk their
wares from.
Lebkowski: But cyberpunk seems to be dying now as a marketing concept. We
thought we were in on the ground floor and, next thing we knew, we were buried
under the basement - coopted by a larger commercial mainstream. The big
question seems to be whether the Internet will become completely corporatized.
And if it does, will there be alternative channels?
RU Well, it’s a legal matter now. A heavily censored net will make any sort of
alternativeness difftcult. But there’s no easy division. Push comes to shove, the
media corps have to sell our pre-packaged little revolts-into-style
for us because
there’s a consumer demand that isn’t going to go away. Things are too unsatisfactory
and people need to spit it up. Or, in other words, the corporate sponsors will want
to put their little logos on everything.
Lebkowski: A favorite example being William
RU You said it! Would
It does!
S. Burroughs
in a Nike ad.
I do a Nike ad? I would! And does that weaken my stance?
Lebkowski: And do you care?
RU I don’t! Really, heroism is a spectator sport. Fuck spectators. Anybody who
doesn’t factor a need to pay rent and to have pleasures into whatever expectations
they have of anybody else can go to f&k. I hate expectations of any kind.
Lebkowski: Subversion
squash it.
never completely
succeeds but neither
does the attempt to
RU Subversion by its nature parisitizes whatever it attempts to subvert. But
subversion isn’t really subversive any more. I mean, you can do the most outrageous
shit, and people’s ability to react is just flattened. The greatest hope for subversives
is William Bennett and the Christian Coalition and all that. They are trying their
best to make subversion subversive again.. . god bless ‘em!
Trapped
in a World
He Never Made
Lebkowski: You seem to be into paradox. Leading cyberculture while slamming it,
practicing raw capitalism while critiquing it in the process. This paradox seems to
run through much of the culture jamming stuff.
20
Digital
Delirium
RU Well, anybody who doesn’t believe that we’re trapped hasn’t taken a good look
around. We’re trapped in a sort of mutating multinational
corporate oligarchy that’s
not about to go away. We’re trapped by the limitations of our species. We’re trapped
in time. At the same time identity, politics, and ethics have long turned liquid. It
seems that what we have, at least among the sort of hip technophile population,
is
an experimental attitude. An experimental attitude is one of not knowing, otherwise it’s not really experimental.
Also, most people try so hard to put their best face forward, right? I mean, if
you’re writing a righteous political statement on Monday and you’re hyping your ass
and talking to the lawyers on Tuesday, you’re not going to emphasize Tuesday,
You’re not going to emphasize your own corruption.
Except I’tend to, because the
deal is what’s real. If I can make one claim, it’s that I’m the most anti-purist
motherILcker
around.
Lebkowski: I was talking to former FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson at a party
last night. He was talking about the corporate monopolization
of media. If five
major corporations control all but the tiniest media channels, then they control the
flow of information.
In an information
economy, that’s the flow of life. That’s why
the corporate/government
interests want to control the Internet. To them, it’s just
one of the several media distribution
channels. Zines and pirate media may continue to exist, but they’re nothing against the corporate powers.
RU There’s some complicated dynamics there, between corporate interests,
government interests, popular interests, and individual liberties that aren’t so easily
sorted out, but I’ll say this from my little corner of the universe. If you have laws
against “obscenity” and “indecency” in an open channel like the net, you’ve effectively silenced the non-mainstream,
non-conforming
voice because, sooner or later,._
this is the medium where it all converges. That’s not some kind of II%&-style
technophilia,
that’s just a fact of life. Sooner or later it all converges around an
extension of telephony. Now, corporate media is a tremendous sponsor of
alternativeness, but they can survive without it. Or they can pressure artists to tone
it down. So it’s the independents who are going to be crushed by this, as usual.
However, the net is a terrific environment for guerrilla warfare. It’s a great
jungle in which to hide and from which to make attacks. And your attacks are by
nature communicative.
That’s what a big chunk of HTM&TOWis about.
LebRowski: I think that effective “guerrilla actions” in a mediated environment
will
have terrific subtlety, Have you any examples of this kind of poetic terrorism from
your own work?
RU: I hope that HTMdTOWis the answer to that question. One idea we propagate is that media hackers have to be really fucking great entertainers. That’s the key.
When you pirate television time, for instance, it should be such a fim thing that
people are waiting at their VCRs for the next one.
I remember having an underground
paper in high school. As soon as the
Principal announced over the loudspeaker that kids weren’t allowed to have it,
Digital
Delirium
21
everybody wanted one. As soon as the kids saw that it was playful and funny, they
wanted the next one. Of course, adults tend to view anything that isn’t dull with
suspicion, which is a problem.
Bigger
than Satan? RU.
Sirius for Anti-Newt!
Lebkowski: You clearly embrace a lot of contradictions.
But what is it that you hope
to accomplish? Is there, in any sense, a positive project?
RU The R.U. Sirius project has always been largely about re-energizing
the
forgotten “ideology” of the 60s revolt, primarily the notion of post-scarcity liberation. I hesitate in tying myself to the 60s mast, but we’re not talking Paul
McCartney or George McGovern here.
OK.. . post-scarcity was basically a premature post-industrial
vision of a
cybernetic culture in which alienated labor and scarcity was all but eliminated by
technology. This had an enormous influence, sometimes explicit and sometimes
subterranean. If you go back and investigate the writings of the Yippies, the
Diggers, Daniel Cohn-Bendit,
who led a near revolution in France in 1968, and
various other political radicals, the ones that didn’t get absorbed into old fashioned
Marx-Leninism,
you find this theme over and over again. The machines of loving
grace.
This isn’t utopian, by the way. I’m anti-utopian.
I don’t believe in to&zing
philosophies or perfectly happy endings. But it could be helluva lot better than it is
now.
Lebkowski: This is like [anarchist subculture
society.
figure] Bob Black’s vision of ludic
RU: Actually we’re in a very perverted version of a ludic society, in the sense that
what’s driving technological evolution is shifting from warfare to information,
communications,
and entertainment..
. better games, greater bandwidth, film
projects the size of military invasions and entertainment
corporations
the size of
medium nation states.
Lebkowski: An extension
of the Japanese postwar economy.
RU Yes. Big business with everybody
get a chance to.. .
so seriously dedicated
to play that they never
Lebkowski: Play is work.
RU Right. In so many ways, our society explicitly strives to be the direct opposite
of the ideal. It’s pretty funny. On the other hand, this speed-of-light
hell-on-wheels
that we’re living in seems to make for a lot of creative energy. There’s something to
be said for the stress that makes us all want to kill each other and make really cool
web pages.
Lebkowski: Notions like the end of work and scarcity are very obscure right now.
Why do you think they’re relevant?
22
Digital
Delirium
RU All you have to do is look at the situation to realize that it’s the only relevant
political position for anybody who isn’t rich. As the result of automation and
internationalization,
the economic power of ordinary people, which used to reside
in the “working class, ” has completely disappeared - which, incidentally, is why a
lot of people have little reason to be thrilled by the relative democratization
of
media communications
that Wired and Mondo have touted. Also, the virtual
economy has overwhelmed the “real” economy of goods and services.. . at the
cutting edge of capitalism, you’re in a pure “transacting” economy of derivatives,
currency exchanges, options and so forth that has displaced economics. Networked
electronic trading is very much its own unique ecology. “Money” is being made not
in the investing itself but on the abstraction of the transacting of conceptual wealth.
Tremendous profits can be conjured from the consensual hallucination
that a
transaction that doesn’t necessarily have to happen might accumulate (for example)
interest at a later date.
The important thing here is that not only doesn’t capitalism require as many
workers, it doesn’t require as many consumers. An economy that trades in pure
abstraction is self-sufficient. It can satisfy itself building hallucinatory
fortunes that
can be cashed in for ownership of property and advanced techno-toys for your
wired elite. It’s all just bits and bytes really, It’s a trick. But it conflates nicely with
the logic of late capitalism which is to eliminate that which is superfluous, in other
words the formerly working class people who are no longer needed as workers or
consumers. That’s what downsizing is about.. . killing the poor. This is not even a
slight exaggeration. This is exactly the trajectory of late capitalism, and specifically
of the Republican revolution.
Anyway, grant me that we’re in a situation where workers are increasingly
superfluous. I don’t have the figures on hand, but some extraordinary
percentage of
those people who are employed wo:rk for temp agencies. Hazel Henderson told me
that 60% of the American people are either unemployable,
unemployed, working
temp, or working without benefits or job security, A week after she said that, I saw
Labor Secretary Robert Reich on television saying more or less the same thing, but
the figure was 70%. But a recent poll shows that something like 95% identih
themselves as middle class. Hah! They’re not middle class.
What you actually have, in vaguely Marxist terminology, is an enormous
lumpenproletariat.
In other words, non-working
or barely-working
poor. I mean,
this is the most oppressed country in the Western world according to all kinds of
statistics. The Reagan Revolution turned the average American into a citizen of the
third world. And here comes Newti.e to finish the job.
People identify with the middle class though.. . they’re temp workers with
televisions, cd players, and hip clothes and hairstyles.
The only alternative to a world of human refuse, serfs and slaves abandoned
by an increasingly self-sufficient corporate cyber/media oligarchy is a revolution of
this lumpenproletariat
(the formerly working class), based not in neo-Luddite
refusal but in desire, a desire to live. Which means that the essentials should be
Digital
Delirium
23
given away free, unconditionally.
This notion is of course completely in opposition
to the current political discourse, and probably goes against every instinct in, say,
the average Wired reader’s brain. I’d like them to just think of me as the anti-Newt.
Cyberculture
(a meme that I’m at least partly responsible for generating,
incidentally)
has emerged as a gleeful apologist for this kill-the-poor
trajectory of
the Republican revolution. You find it all over Wiredthis mix of chaos theory
and biological modeling that is somehow interpreted as scientific proof of the need
to devolve and decentralize the social welfare state while also deregulating and
empowering the powerful, autocratic, multinational
corporations. You’ve basically
got the breakdown of nation states into global economies simultaneous with the
atomization of individuals or their balkanization
into disconnected sub-groups,
because digital technology conflates space while decentralizing communication
and
attention. The result is a clear playing field for a mutating corporate oligarchy,
which is what we have. I mean, people think it’s really liberating because the old
industrial ruling class has been liquefied and it’s possible for young players to amass
extraordinary
instant dynasties. But it’s savage and inhuman. Maybe the wired elite
think that’s hip. But then don’t go around crying about crime in the streets or
pretending to be concerned with ethics.
It’s particularly sad and poignant for me to witness how comfortably the
subcultural contempt for the normal, the hunger for novelty and change, and the
basic anarchistic temperament that was at the core of Mondo 2000 fits the hip,
smug, boundary-breaking,
fast-moving, no-time-for-social-niceties
world of your
wired mega-corporate
info/comm/media
players. You can find our dirty fingerprints, our rhetoric, all over their advertising style. The joke’s on me.
LebAowsrhi: Clearly there’s a fragmentation
of community and dissolution of soul.
We all sort of slid into it as cyberfoo was co-opted and the Internet was transformed
into digital Las Vagueness, but what are you going to do? Do you have a political
agenda or a performance agenda?
RU My main agenda is to explode’constricting
illusions, whether it’s bourgeois
propriety, expectation, shame over sexuality, or the money system. Also, in Freudian
terms, I’m at war with the cultural superego in favor of the disencumberment
of the
libido, the id, and the ego.. . definitely in that order - which connects me to the
surrealist and dadaist traditions. Anyway, I don’t acknowledge any separation
between a political agenda, a performance agenda, a pop agenda, a theoretical
agenda, a radical agenda, a survival agenda, a sexual agenda.. .
My activities right now include getting attention for the book How To Mutate
& Take. Over the World, which I believe is an actual act of sabotage against the plans
of big media/technology
business, for reasons that aren’t immediately obvious. The
book announces itself as an act of sabotage on the surface, and fails as that, again on
the surface. Wait and see how it unfolds.
At the same time, I believe that I’m finally prepared to give expression to a
complete alternative, revolutionary
philosophy for the next decade. I’m prepared to
deal with both deconstructions
and visionary alternatives regarding the money
system, cyborgization,
virtualization,
media, violence and violent media and art,
24
Digital
Delirium
censorship, uncertainty, extropianism or the transcendence of ordinary life,
sociobiology, race, gender, sexuality, drugs, individualism
and community. I’m ready
to put forth a digital age politic that embraces the goals of both liberalism and
libertarianism.
I believe this will colme together with the help of collaborators over
the next year or two, and will be presented on The Mutate Project web page.
Nobody has exploded the meaning of the money system or really produced a
visionary sociopolitical
agenda for ai post-industrial
economy. It can be done. And
1’11 do it, with some help.
You know, I see all these media and software people making and spending
millions and millions of dollars, and all of these millions of dollars being pissed
away on mediocre films, mediocre magazines, peabrained rock bands, stupid web
sites - it makes me sick. Give me one million fucking dollars and 1’11 bring you
major cultural and political change within four years. The few people who really
know about Mondd2OOO and what we did with very tiny resources will know that
I’m being megalomaniacal
but I may be right, everybody else will think I’m just
being megalomaniacal.
But I’ve grown a lot since Mondu 2000. Get me behind the
wheel of another vehicle and Wiredwill
be eating my dust. I want to be bigger than
Satan.
Unstable Networks
Bruce Sterling
The commentary at cyberspace events often comes from a surprisingly wide
area of the political and social spectrum, especially considering that most of the
principals dress alike, look alike, and all use the same machinery. Still, the widely
various people who speak at events like this have a bedrock of agreement. They will
all declare that these are unprecedented and revolutionary
times for computer
communications,
and that the decisions we make right now are going to drastically
affect society for dozens, if not hundreds, of years to come.
And there’s a lot of home truth in that assessment. We really have been
involved in a revolutionary
epoch - during the past seven years the status quo has
taken a terrible battering, not just in the world of computation,
but across the
board, economically, politically, socially. There is a level of instability loose at the
end of the 20th century that has not been around since at least 1945. Computer
communications
is one of most powerful, most influential,
and least stable areas in
the new world disorder.
However, it seems to me that finally, now, in the summer of 1996, we may
have attained a comparative breathing-space. The flash-bulb of cyber-novelty has
begun to fade from the retina of the public eye.
The bloom of apparently unlimited possibility has receded a bit. We’ve begun
to get a grip on our dumbfounded
wonder. This process may be disillusioning,
but
one needn’t feel cynical about it. It’s not a cause for despair. That’s the lovely thing
about unlimited possibility and its down-and-dirty
interaction with the human
condition.
There you are, you see - facing the marvellous unknown - all those
possibilities. And, being human, you just have to make one little-decision. Take one
little action -just
to show that you can, really. And there’s a reaction to that
action, and that’s gratifying, so you take another step. Then another, and another,
and another, and pretty soon you’ve got kids and a mortgage. You’re committed.
That’s life.
We’ve managed to take some very important and very consequential actions
in the past seven years. They may not have been wise actions, but we’re not wise;
we’re just blundering about and doing the best we can. And what was the upshot?
Basically, we’ve bet the farm on the digital imperative.
In the year 1996, everything aspires to the condition of software. Art, politics,
music, money, words-in-a-row,
even sex wants to be digital and on a network.
Everything aspires to the nebulous and liquid quality of moving digital informa-
26
Digital
Delirium
tion. We’re getting used to this prospect in 199 6. We can spare ourselves the
exhilarating sense of hysteria that this new reality provokes. We should seize this
chance to get a little mental oxygen. We’ll need it.
The year 1996 is nicely poised between the world-shattering
events of 19 89
and the onrushing specter of the year 2000. The pl anet is still visibly recovering
from 1989, the year the cold war ended, and maybe the first year in which computer networks came creeping out of technical obscurity to seriously menace the status
quo. Unless I miss my guess, the year 2000 will also be a truly extraordinary
historical moment. The year 2000 will be an excellent opportunity
to deny and
dispose of the deeply repugnant twentieth century. In the year 2000 there will be a
general erasing of the memory banks, a bitter scorn for the hopelessly outdated, a
firm and somewhat frantic rejection of a great deal of cultural baggage. Like most
New Year’s Parties, it’ll feel so good that none of us will be able to resist. In the year
2000, we’ll all be engaged in a general frenzy of bright-eyed denial.
So there’s not much point in raising the black flag and rushing the barricades
in 199 6. That’s always a natural temptation, but we might be better advised to
gather our wits and save some strength. Anything that we decide is electronic gospel
right now will simply be kicked out of court in 2001. So even though we are all
computer enthusiasts here, just for once let’s try not to get completely worked up.
There’s sure to be plenty of time and reason for panic later.
Because now, in 1996, we really have an Information
Society. We used to talk
about having an information
society, and dream ardently of living in one, and now
we’ve actually got one. In 19 89 it was still theory and vaporware, but this is 19 96,
and we’re in bed with it. We have to watch it eat crackers, we have to launder its
sheets.
Now that we’ve got it, what can we say about it? The very first fact to bear in
mind about our Information
Society is that this too shall pass.
We live in the Information
Age now, but there are people walking around in
this city who have lived through thlc Aviation Age, the Radio Age, the ThousandYear Reich, the Atomic Age, the Space Age, the New Age, the Aquarian Age, not to
mention the sexual revolution and the epoch of New Soviet Man. And trust me, a
lot of these geezers and geezerettes are going to outlive the Information
Age as well.
In the old days history used to leave people behind, but now the pace of innovation
is so savage that individual
human beings can leave history behind. This “age” stuff
comes pretty cheap to us nowadays. We postmodern types can burn out an age in
ten years.
There’s nothing more grotesquely temporary than a computer. I, personally,
have two perfectly functional Apples and an Atari in a storeroom. I have no idea
what to do with these computers. They cost me a great deal of money. Learning to
use them was very complex and tiresome. It seemed like a very hip and groovy idea
at the time, but now those high-tech gizmos are utterly obsolete and worthless. If I
leave them on the sidewalk outside my house, together with the software and the
manuals, nobody will bother to bend over and pick them up.
I moved house recently. This caused me to make a trip to the Austin city
landfill. Austin has a very nice landfill actually, it’s manned by well-meaning
Green
Digital
Delirium
27
enthusiasts who are working hard to recycle anything usable. When I went there last
month I discovered a heap of junked computers that was two stories high. Dead
monitors, dead keyboards, dead CPUs, dead modems. The junk people in my
home town get a stack that size once a week.
I had to pay some close attention to that mighty heap of dead computers. It
had all the sinister lure of the elephants’ graveyard. Most of those computers looked
like they were in perfect working order. The really ominous part of the stack was .
the really quite large percentage of discarded junk that was still in the shrinkwrap.
Never been used, and already extinct.
Sometimes I talk to audiences who aren’t computer enthusiasts like you,
people who are deeply and genuinely intimidated
by computers. I urge them not to
worry too much. I urge them to think of a computer as something like a dragonfly.
Yes, a dragonfly can do many impressive things that no human being can do, such
as hover in midair and eat gnats. And yes, a dragonfly might even bite you. But you
see, a dragonfly is a very temporary thing. 1~ the height of summer, there will be
whole clouds of them up there, sunlight glinting off their diaphanous wings, just
flitting by, eating those gnats.
But then the winter will come. And the snow will pile high. And every one of
those lovely dragonflies will be cold, and stiff, and dead. But you - you’ll be cozied
up in your bath ro b e and bunny slippers, sipping hot chocolate and reading Danielle
Steel novels.
Gordon Moore says that a computer generation lasts about eighteen months.
He says that computer chips double in power every eighteen months, roughly
speaking. That means that a computer in 20 10 is about 150 times as powerful as a
computer in 1990. Roughly speaking. I had a computer in 1990. With any kind of
luck I’ll probably be around in 20 IO, and I rather imagine I’ll have a computer
then, too. So exactly how impressed am I supposed to get about a 1996 computer?
It’s maybe five percent of the comfiuter I’ll eventually be using. That’s like comparing a matchbox car to a Rolls Royce.
Even paperback books have a far longer lifespan than computers. It’s a
humble thing, a book, but ;he interface doesn’t change and they don’t need software
upgrades and new operating systems. A five dollar paperback book will dance on
the grave of a five thousand dollar computer.
Nothing that is real is absolute. In anything real there is good news and
there’s bad news. The Information
Society has become a reality. There’s good news,
ladies and gentlemen, and there’s bad news. The good news is, the digital revolution
is over. The digits won hands down. Casualties were low, considering. We now live
in the early days of the digital provisional government.
The bad news is that the provisional government is inherently unstable. Its
powerbase is a giant virtual castle made of bits. Bits of sand.
It’s a very mixed bag, the information
age. Don’t get me wrong; I love living
here. Like a lot of my generation, I grew up more or less expecting nuclear
armageddon, and with that prospect off the front burner, life for me is a carnival. In
the Informatibn
Age, every day’s an adventure. I’m never bored.
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Digital
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The Information
Age has many stellar virtues. It is market driven and
extremely innovative. It’s high-tech, hip and fast on its feet. People who work in this
field are deeply opportunistic
and will seize on the slightest chance at daylight.
The bad news is, if you survive every day by agile broken-field
running it’s
easy to lose sight of your goals. In fact, you can forget the very concept of goals; you
can run incredibly hard every day just to remain in the same place.
The Information
Society has basically forfeited any democratic control over
its own destiny. No one’s opinion is ever asked, nobody is ever polled. If we’d been
asked to vote in a digital revolution, it almost certainly would never have happened.
We were never offered that chance, it never occurred to us to ask for it or take it.
Our lives have been turned upside down by a series of obscure technical events that
transpired in a nearly perfect political vacuum. The moral idea of informed consent
was never raised. Weird homemade machinery that was full of bugs and never
worked very well burst out of garages in California and destroyed the modern
capitalist order. That’s the story, basically. Like it or lump it.
There are vast fortunes to be made overnight in the Information
Society. It’s
the hottest economic game on the planet. Vast fortunes can be lost just as quickly.
Worse yet, there’s no good safe place to store your loot if you make a pile and
decide to jump off the jampacked no-brakes information
bus. Thanks to computers, the stock market and bond market and currency markets are aswarm with
sophisticated capital instruments that have created a seething global casino
economy. There’s more money in the thrash of leverage, futures and derivatives than
there is in rational capitalist investment. In an Information
Society, even oil
companies want to act like Hollywood.
Thanks to modems, cellphones, cell-faxes, laptops, beepers and satellite
dishes, we’re never out of touch. I can read my email (which I happen to store in
San Francisco) whenever I’m in Vancouver. The bad news is that, yes, I can read my
email in Vancouver. I could be doing great British Columbia-type
things instead:
having the BC sushi roll, shopping in Chinatown, spiking the old growth forest.
But 1’11deny myself those harmless,, life-enhancing
amusements, because I feel
compelled to mind my business and read my email.
There might be some kind of urgent message from a publisher in Italy. I’ve
had publishers in Italy for years now, but they never, ever sent me urgent messages,
because they used to know full well that it was useless. Now they can reach me fast
and cheap and by golly, they expect to reach me and they expect a response. Can’t
neglect that email. It’s got global re,ach! I might get fanmail from some cypherpunk
in Finland. Some teenage hacker in Abu Dhabi wants me to tell him how to break
into Saudi mainframes, so he can get his hands chopped off by the authorities. I’m
never out of touch. I’m never allowed to be, because there’s no place left to hide.
When I’m not changing diapers, I fancy myself quite-the hip globetrotter
Information
Age kind of guy. That’s because I have friends in Prague. People in
Prague are very friendly, they have a lovely town and a unique culture. They’re also
very hospitable, and it’s a good thing, because since 1990 or so they’ve been getting
about 80 million people a year through that city.
Digital
Delirium
29
This influence of rampant globalization
is hitting a little country which was
deepfrozen behind the Iron Curtain for forty years. The Web throws down its
virtual threading all over the world, and what does this do to indigenous cultures? I
don’t think there’s a lot of use in mincing words here. I think it’s pretty clear that
the Information
Society engulfs and devours the little unique places.
It’s wonderful to visit Prague, but if you’re a citizen of the Information
Society, you can’t touch that place without denting it. Every quiet and hidden place
in the world bears our fingerprints now. As the seasoned travel writer Pica Iyer likes
to put it, it’s Video Night in Katmandu.
For me this situation is great. Basically, I live and breathe and thrive through
cultural imperialism.
I have four books out in Denmark this year. You see, I got
interviewed by some stranger over the Internet, and it turned out he worked for a
major newspaper in Copenhagen. Suddenly and quite without my own intention, I
became rather well-known
in Denmark. This October I’m flying to Copenhagen to
do my one-man corporate multinational
thing.
I’ll be an American science fiction writer living it up in Denmark. How many
Danish science fiction writers do I know? Zero. I know they must exist, so I hope
1’11 meet some. For me to get published in their country - it’s easy, it’s something I
can do by accident. For a Danish science fiction writer to get published in my
country - they’d have better luck trying to ooze face-first through a one-way
mirror.
Is the Internet really a many-to-many,
egalitarian network? Is a guy with a
modem in Copenhagen or Montreal really on the same level as a guy with a modem
in Austin or San Francisco? I’d like to think that is the case. Although it clearly isn’t.
Personally, I like to talk to remote strangers on the Internet. I always go out
of my way to reply politely to these odd characters around the planet with their
unlikely Internet addresses and their entertainingly
broken English - English
which, by the way, is always a million times better than my French, my Russian, my
Czech, my Danish, or my Japanese.
The good news is that I can chat with distant strangers. The bad news is that
while I’m on the Internet, I’m not chatting to my next door neighbor. I’m not going
to any neighborhood
rallies, I’m not throwing parties for local friends, I’m not
babysitting other people’s kids. It may be that I’m not even talking to my own
children, who are off in the living room being raised by Nintendo. Sure, I can trade
digital video clips with hackers in Borneo over World Wide Web, but for aI1 I know
my next-door neighbor is a serial killer with an icebox full of his acquaintances.
Is this a pernicious aspect of the Information
Society? Well, how will we
know? Who can tell? Who’s keeping track? Suppose it were pernicious - how
would they stop me? Are the police supposed to unplug and confiscate my modem,
tell me to go to the local Rotary Club and stop typing messages to people in
Djakarta and Vladivostok? By what right?
There’s always something new in cyberspace circles. It’s unfailingly entertaining, you’ve got to give it that. There’s a scandal a week, sometimes two. I wrote a
30
Digital
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nonfiction true-crime book about one of these cyberspace scandals once - it took
me a year and a half to do it. I could write a similar book once every week if there
were fifty-two of me.
Let’s just dip our fingertips into this brimming cornucopia of digital bounty,
shall we? Government abuse of confidential
files. Software piracy on pirate bulletin
boards. Canadian judicial gag rules on cases flouted by people on the Internet. The
CIA, the NSA trolling the Internet for anything they might find useful. The French
secret service bribing and supplying money to the Chaos Computer Club. Cryptography scandals, just no end to those; crypt0 has more scandals and screw-ups and
bonehead moves than a 24 hour fesltival of the Three Stooges.
Oceans of money sloshing around. Telephone companies buying cable
companies, software companies buying cellphone companies, computer companies
buying parts of the radio spectrum. Internet startups offering voice phone software,
telephone companies offering Internet hookups. Software patents, algorithm
patents. Computer search and seizure practice. Spamming scandals, virus scandals.
Poisoned JAVA applets - bad applets - rotten applets.
I’ve watched this stuff going on for years now. A pattern is emerging. It’s
amazing how little is ever decided, how little there is to show at the end of the day.
Everything is temporary, all band-aids and toothpicks. Every once in a while there’s
a solemn edict from on high, something like America’s Communications
Decency
Act, a ridiculous gesture with absolutely no connection to reality. Quite often some
small and innocent person is inconvenienced,
insulted or even crushed by the blind
mechanisms of the powers-that-be,
but that changes nothing. Events that might
become case law or policy are treated merely as traffic accidents on the Internet.
“What, they arrested him? Too bad! What, they might arrest me too? Ha ha ha!
Forget it!”
People who like computers are really smart. They’re bright, imaginative and
inventive people. They also work hard, they are quick studies and they. tend to have
quite a lot of money and to deploy it with gusto and relish. Despite these manifest
virtues, these bright, inventive computer people are some of the worst organizers in
the world. They can’t organize a bridge party without wanting to change the cards
half-way for a colorful graphic-intensive
Tarot deck. Everybody wants to be the
symbolic analyst, nobody wants to empty the ashtrays and make the hors d’oeuvres.
They’re hungry all right, but they don’t want to fill the sink, roll up sleeves and do
the dishes. Too slow, too dirty, too analog. Can’t we just order Chinese take-out and
have it faxed in?
Instability is the congenital disorder of the lords of the Information
Society.
It’s their version of the mark of Cain. Even the pathetic brainwashed victims of
corrupt Christian televangelists can out-organize computer people. They don’t want
to build their own system, fill the plotholes and root out the sewers. They want to
hack the old system overnight and scamper off with unearned rewards. That’s why
Ross Perot, a textbook case of a megalomaniacal
computer tycoon, thinks he can
make himself President by skipping any actual political career and making gestures
on a TV talk show.
Digital
~
Delirium
31
Computer activists react in deep existential horror at the thought of political
scutwork, patiently testifying to subcommitees, lobbying legislators. Actual politics
is beneath them. They want to sit down at the console, hit alt-control-F2
and have
a law come out. The price of liberty is said to be eternal vigilance - but that’s a
pretty steep price, isn’t it? Can’t we just automate this eternal vigilance thing?
Maybe we can just install lots of 24-hour networked videocams.
The Information
Society is not at all a friendly environment
for the knight in
gray fhumel armor, the loyal employee, Mr. Cog, the Organization
Man. This guy is
dwindling
like the bison, because we can’t be bothered to support him and yet we
still want his territory. We don’t want to guarantee,this guy anything,. because we
probably won’t be around ourselves when he needs us. We Information
Age types
lack the patience for actual corporations, so we prefer nice, flimsy, gilded-pasteboard virtual corporations. In virtual corporations, there are no corporate power
pyramids and no lines of accountability. That’s exactly why people like virtual
corporations in the Information
Society - amazing stuff happens and huge sums
change hands, and yet no one can be held responsible. Your average high-tech startup is one of those decentralized, empowered, Third Wave organizations. Something
like a mafia. Not the old-fashioned
mafia where people swore loyalty till death,
though. No, it’s new and postmodern, like the Russian Mafia.
It’s the Silicon Valley ethos. People in Silicon Valley prefer to work for a
company for two years and then bail. They don’t want to creep up dull and tiresome corporate ladders. I don’t blame ‘em, because I sure never did it, but they have
developed a hack for this. They place their bets on a bunch of different start-ups,
and then have one hit big and dump a load of cash in their laps. The idea of being
morally, fiscally and socially responsible for your professional activities over a
twenty or thirty year period is completely anathema to Silicon Valley people, to
electronic frontier people. They really do have a frontier mentality - a brave,
optimistic, can-do, strip-mining,
clear-cutting mentality. They don’t eat what they
kill.
People as bright as really bright computer people just’can’t stand to do boring
things for a long boring time. They fear and despise concepts like political party
discipline, institutions, armies.
That’s why the Internet is not at all like an army, An army is a vast machine
for forcing somebody’s unwilling flesh into the meatgrinder. It gets results by
forcing results with blood and discipline and bayonets. The internet is a vast
machine for finding somebody else to write your term paper for you. It gets results
by mechanically sifting through enormous heaps of useless gibberish. You pay your
money and you take your choice.
The Internet is out of control. No one is responsible for it. This is its most
charming aspect. It’s that sense of wizardry, that dionysian quality, the spontaneous
way it accretes, the way it spreads on the wind all over the place, much like bread
mold. People really enjoying watching phenomena that are out of control, especially
when they’re at a safe distance, like behind the glass of a computer screen. It’s a fine
spectacle, a truly noble spectacle, a 105% genuine vision thing, one of the very few
aspects of contemporary
society which isn’t transparently motivated by bald greed
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Digital
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and ruthless opportunism.
People lean on the Net and believe in it with a conviction all the stronger because there is so little else left for them to believe in. They
don’t mind that it’s out of control, when the things that are in control are commonly bent to such sordid ends.
Of course, living in a way which is genuinely out of control is a rather
different business. People like to be out of control for, like, the space of a Mardi
Gras weekend. After that they want a back rub and some money, They start looking
around for their house shoes. If they can’t find them they start getting anxious. And
justly so.
People in the Information
Society are adaptable and fast on their feet. They’re
all road warriors with laptops. They don’t need a big clunky ranch house with a
white picket fence; they’re living out of the back of a Ferrari. Which is very cool.
Unless your grandmother
loses her ranch house because the entire economy has
downsized and devolved into a viral mess. Then your grandmother
decides that she
has to move into the back seat of the Ferrari with you. Then you and your fleet.
footed highly wired lifestyle look a. tad less cozy. It becomes a tad hard to tell the
jetsetters from the gypsies in that situation.
All this free-floating anxiety you’ve been feeling suddenly comes home to
roost. Who’s logging those frequent-flyer
miles, and who’s merely homeless? It’s
great to cut fine distinctions between the keyboard punching virtual class and the
rust-belt lumpenproletariat,
but a real no-kidding
aristocracy has a host of ways to
tell Us from Them. The Information
Age doesn’t have that, it moves too fast for
elegant manners. In the Information
Age, you can be a physicist with four postdots and still drive a cab. It’s market-driven
this and market driven that, marketdriven dog and market-driven
cat. In the Information
Society, the invisible hand of
the market isn’t a human hand. It never was, but now its nature is obvious. It’s some
kind of spastically twitching titanium-coated
manipulator.
In the Information
Society we like to believe that knowledge is power.
Because it is, sort of kind of. On alternate Tuesdays, maybe. People like to say that
the so-called knowledge found on the Internet is empowering to the individual.
Is it
really?
Let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s imagine you have a brain tumor. You’re
in big trouble, but luckily, you’re on the Internet. You could try to find a brain
surgeon in your home town, but why risk this old-fashioned,
limited, parochial
solution? Instead, you do an Alta Vista search for the term “brain surgeon.” Sure
enough, you get an Internet entrepreneur. You go to an IRC channel to have a chat
with this guy.
“So, can you tell me a little abqut your qualifications?”
“Sure! I’ve memorized the Brain Surgery Frequently Asked Questions list. I
always read netnews from alt.brain.surgery.
I’ve ftp’d and gophered hundreds of files
about human brains. Plus, I have lifteen CD-ROMS
about brain surgery. In fact,
I’ve even put on a headset and goggles and performed virtual brain surgery, rehearsing the.procedures hundreds of times in computer simulations. Plus, I work cheap!
No union! When can you come on down to the lab?”
“So you’re not an actual MD, then?”
Digital
Delirium
33
“Sure I got a degree, I’ve got a nice printout diploma from Dr. Benway’s
Online College ofvirtual
Medical Knowledge. It’s based in a website in Grenada. I
downloaded and read every one of the lessons, so you don’t need to worry. Software
engineers don’t have licenses, politicians don’t have licenses, journalists don’t have
licenses either, and those are all important knowledge-based
professions, so I don’t
see why you need to get all fussy about cutting people’s heads open. This is the
Information
Age, and thanks to the Internet I possess all the photos and words and
documents that any doctor has. Why should I go through a a lot of tiresome pro
forma nonsense before I hang up my shingle? Let’s do business.”
“How about the Hippocratic
Oath?”
“Look, that documentation
is over two thousand years old. Get up to date,
pal. Your pathetic nationalist government may not approve of our healthcare
methods up there in stuffy socialist Canada, but not everybody has your health
system. Here in the Turks and Caicos Islands everything we do is perfectly legal.”
There’s a word for people who can learn all the buzzwords of medicine
without getting a diploma, serving an internship, or joining a professional medical
association. We call these people “quacks,” Quacks are a very interesting class of
people. They’re inventive and clever and make a lot of money. They’ve always made
a lot of money, but with the free flow of specialized information
on the Internet,
incredible new vistas open up for quacks. I haven’t seen many of these vistas fully
exploited yet, but I rather expect to.
Information
Society people may not be quacks exactly, but they sure do wear
a lot of hats. I know people personally who are CD-ROM
designers and software
entrepreneurs and system administrators
and security consultants and conference
organizers, and that’s all in one week. They are clever, inventive people who are
quick studies and can brush up on the jargon of several widely different occupations
and convince their clients that they are genuinely skilled and experienced.
If you do that in the world of computers it’s called access to information
and
self-guided education, but if you try it in law or medicine or civil engineering you
are best described as a “charlatan.” The Information Age may be the golden age of
charlatanry.
This is the way that system-cracking hackers act, the way that hackers learn
things. When system cracker people use convincing language to get people to give
them access that they really shouldn’t have, they call that practice “social engineering.” It’s very powerful and very corrosive.
Hackers are very evangelical about liberating other people’s secrets. It’s a core
myth of the era. There have been several Hollywood movies that hinge on gallant
Robin Hood hackers breaking into a system and finding out some terrible and
important secret. The baddies try to grab them and shut them up, but in the last
reel the hackers always blow the hidden information
all over the network and it
ends up in the New York Times or CNN. End of story.
It’s a beautiful idea really, one of the central romantic myths of the Information Age. No one can shut up the heroic hacker dissidents, and the bad guys always
crumble and scamper off like whipped dogs when the truth comes out. A beautiful
myth. I’ve been following the hack-phreak scene for years now, hoping that some-
34
Digital
Delirium
day, just once, something like that would actually happen. Some hacker kid breaks
into the sinister corporate mainframe and he finds and distributes the secret and
hideous data files that prove that rich guys in suits are deliberately poisoning us
with dioxin. Or maybe they’ve got the aliens from the Roswell incident or just a few
of the 47 guys who shot John Kennedy. If a hacker really did something like that
would make up for a lot of annoyances.
Never happens. Never ever. Actually, horrible secrets come up all the time,
but they’re usually found out by journalists and cops. And even that finishes up
with a happy ending about one time in twenty. Does the free flow of information
on the Internet help? I wonder. I do know of one revelatory scandal that broke on
the Internet, the Pentium chip bug. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an example of
people on the Internet unearthing and distributing
a real-world non-computerbased scandal.
Something really embarrassing. The truth comes in over the modems and
governments fall. Maybe that’11 happen someday. I don’t think it’s happening now.
Let me give you what seems to me to be a swell real-world example of this. I
think this story is the single weirdest story I’ve ever heard over the Internet.
This story has been happening in the country of Slovakia over the past year.
Slovakia used to be the right half of Czechoslovakia, but the Czech Republic ended
up in the hands of Vaclav Havel, and the Slovak Republic ended up in the pockets
of a gentleman named Vladimir Meciar. Meciar became Prime Minister of his new
little republic, but he got into a nasty power-struggle
with Slovakia’s President, a
guy named Michal Kovac. Kovac and Meciar were from different parties and they
just didn’t get along.
Well, President MichaI Kovac has a son named Michal Kovac Jr., and this
younger man was involved in some shady business deals in Austria. Meciar knew
this, he was making a big deal of it. Nothing much was happening there though, his
son’s financial scandal wasn’t destroying Kovac politically.
So last August eight guys jump Michal Kovac Jr. in his Mercedes limo. First
they handcuff him, then they put a black hood on him, then they beat him up,
then they torture him with electric shocks, then they force him to guzzle half a liter
of whiskey so he gets completely plastered. Then they bundle the president’s son
into his own Mercedes limo, and they drive him across the border into Austria.
Then they dump him and leave.
So the Austrian cops, all surprised, find the son of the President of Slovakia
dead drunk in his car. So they arrest him and take him to the hospital to patch up
his wounds.
So after a while the Austrian cops figure it’s kind of embarrassing to have the
Slovak President’s son in the slammer, especially under these circumstances with the
electric shocks and all. It’s sort of as if Hillary Clinton had been,beaten up and
dumped in Canada and accused of shady dealing in Arkansas real estate. I mean,
maybe you Canadians would have your suspicions about Hillary, but I figure you
would probably want to give her back pronto. So the Austrians let Kovak Jr. go
back to Slovakia. He goes back plenty mad.
Digital
Delirium
35
‘Well, the Slovaks get a cop to investigate this kidnapping,
but the cop gets
fired right away. You see, the cop swiftly discovered that these kidnappers were
members of the Slovak Intelligence Service, which is a secret police agency in the
pocket of the Prime Minister. Another cop took the job, he found out the same
thing, and he got fired too. The head of the Slovak Intelligence Service arranged
both of these firings. He complained that the police were being too rough on his
secret police agents and endangering national security.
This is all a true story, ladies and gentlemen. I’m not embroidering
this, in
fact I’m sparing you some of the real Prisoner ofzenda elements because they’re too
melodramatic
even for a science fiction writer. The scandal is looking pretty bad for
the Prime Minister at this point, so he gets some of his allies in the Parliament to
accuse the President of high treason.
That doesn’t work out. The treason impeachment trial doesn’t get off the
ground, because the Prime Minister hasn’t figured out how to swing votes in his
own parliament. And also because the President himself has actually done anything.
At this point one of the original kidnappers becomes disgusted. He’s a secret
policeman and a torturer, but he just can’t take it any more. He goes to the press
and confesses everything. He testifies repeatedly, to the newspapers, to the radio, to
the cops, that the head of the secret service was on the radio personally directing the
whole affair.
Prime Minister Meciar and his secret police boss loudly deny this. They
swiftly come up with an alternate story. They declare that the President’s son
kidnapped himself, tortured himself with electrodes, and dumped himself in Austria
dead drunk, just to make the Prime Minister look bad.
Secret police agents then find the family of this guy whose confessed to the
kidnapping,
and they start beating them up. Later the guy’s best friend is blown up
by a car bomb. When the autopsy is performed the coroner finds a bullet in the
dead man’s stomach. The Prime Minister’s stooges claim that the car blew up by
accident and the bullets was an accidental bullet in the stomach that came from the
victim’s own gun when it accidentally went off in the terrific heat from the car’s
accidentally blowing up, and that it’s terribly shocking and even libellous to allege
that this was a political murder.
The President’s out of patience now. The President openly accuses the secret
police of kidnapping
his son, so the head of the secret police sues him for libel. He
also sues the local newspaper for saying the same thing, and then he sues a priest
who presided over the blown-up guy’s funeral. The Prime Minister puts yet another
stooge on TV who claims that the president’s son rigged the whole thing.
Then the Slovak Parliament gets into the act. They’ve got an independent
commission which has been investigating. Got some results too - the committee
gives out the names of the eight kidnappers and the cars they were driving and
exactly how they went about kidnapping
the President’s son.
And I’m watching this whole thing take place, week by week, day by day, in
amazed fascination. Because I’m on a couple of central European Internet mailing
lists.
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Digital
Delirium
There’s even a tasty phone phreak angle in this, because at one point somebody taps the phone calls coming out of the limo of the chief of secret police, and
the chief spook is laughing evilly at the investigators and calling them a bunch of
idiots who’ll never prove anything. They got the tape and they play it on the radio.
The secret policeman says the tape is forged. He refuses to resign. He’s still in power
right now.
Now - if having the truth splashed across the Internet was enough to bring
down a government, wouldn’t this do it? This looks like a pretty whacking good
scandal to me. It’s quite a story, it’s too weird even for Hollywood.
It’s got kidnappers and electrodes and carbombs and secret policemen and embezzlement and
thugs and politicians. At the risk of being sued for libel by angry Slovak authorities,
I would have to conclude that the country’s highest off&ls
are - well, let’s just say
they’re strongly implicated. So is the Prime Minister going to resign? Do the decent
thing? Skulk off in shame? Bow to public opinion, roused to righteous fury by these
unsavory revelations?
Of course not! He’s simply gonna brazen it out in the broad light of day.
People from outside Slovakia will simply be ignored, and troublesome people inside
Slovakia will be sued, pursued, bea.ten up, zapped with electrodes and dumped in
Austria if not blown sky high. The Prime Minister is like a wolverine with his foot
nailed to a board. Except that it’s.not his foot, and that’s not a board, and it’s not a
big bloody nail, and anybody who says different had better be real careful around
an ignition key.
You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free, right? Sunlight is
the best disinfectant. Well, maybe.
We might learn a lot of truth about a lot of things off the Internet, or at least
access a lot of data about a lot of weird junk, but does that mean that evil vanishes?
Is our technology really a panacea for our bad politics? I don’t see how. We can’t
wave a floppy disk like a bag of garlic and expect every vampire in history to vanish.
Isn’t it far more likely that we’ll get the Internet that we deserve? Cyberspace
isn’t a world all its own like Jupiter or Pluto, it’s a funhouse mirror of the society
that breeds it. Like most mirrors it shows whatever it’s given: on any day, that’s
mostly human banality. Cyberspace is not a fairy realm of magical transformations.
It’s a realm of transformations
all right, but since human beings aren’t magical
fairies you can pretty well scratch the magic and the fairy parts.
Sometimes computers really are empowering. On the days when they’re new,
and the days when they really work, which are pretty much contradictory
times,
actually. When computers do work, it’s the power to be your best. It’s also the
power to be your worst, which doesn’t get quite so much publicity in the ads. But
you know, a power that was only the power to do good would not be power at all.
Rale power is a genuine trial. Real power is a grave responsibility
and a grave
temptation which often causes people to go mad. Technical power is power. When
you deal with power you have to fear the consequence of a bad decision before you
can find any satisfaction in a good one. Real power means real decisions, real action
Digital
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37
with real consequence. If that weren’t true then we would be puppets devoid of will,
permanent children always spared temptation by machinery in the role of the
adults.
It saddens me to say these things, because it goes so much against my nature.
I’m a science fiction writer. People pay me to dream stuff up. People have to have
their dreams; without vision, the people perish.
It’s not that fabulous possibilities aren’t real. They are real. In the cold
objective eye of eternity, everyone who has ever flown across the Atlantic has done
something just as marvelous as Lindbergh did. Lucky Lindy was met by cheering
crowds who heralded the mighty dawn of the new age of flight. But if you were met
by cheering crowds on the far side of the Atlantic when you flew to France in 1996,
this would not be good. You would not be pleased to see that their sense of wonder
about the act of flight was still intact. You wouldn’t congratulate the French on their
lack of disillusionment.
On the contrary, you would know full well that something
had gone terribly wrong with the human beings who were witnessing this event. It
would be a sign of psychopathic disruption, a society stuck in an infinite loop, jaws
always agape, learning nothing, experiencing nothing.
We shouldn’t blame ourselves when the wonder fades, much less blame our
machinery. Instead, we should come to appreciate the way that human beings give
ideas their substance. We can take fantastic abstractions and personifjr them, make
them real. We’re not disembodied intellects; that was a powerful dream of the last
millennium,
but a new millennium
is at hand now, and our machines can play that
dismal role for us. Infinity and eternity are not our problems.
Science fiction writers say a lot of silly things, but H.G. Wells once said a
very wise thing. “If anything is possible, then nothing is interesting.” It’s not the
center of ideas that are interesting, these bloodless Platonic concepts of bogus purity
and lifeless rigid order. It’s the living, seething mess out there, where actions have
consequences, where the street finds its own uses for things. That is our arena. And
it’s up to us, not just to imagine it, but to inhabit it. Not just to admire it and make
gestures, but to judge it arid take action.
The future is unwritten.
GlobalDebtand Parallel
Universe
An electronic billboard in Times Square displays the American public debt,
an astronomical figure of some thousands of billions of dollars which increases at a
rate of $20,000 a second. Another electronic billboard at the Beaubourg Center in
Paris displays the thousands of seconds until the year 2000. The latter figure is that
of time, which gradually diminishes. The former figure is that of money, which
increases at a sky-rocketing speed. The latter is a countdown to second zero. The
former, on the contrary, extends to infinity. Yet, at least in the imaginary, both of
them evoke a catastrophe: the vanishing of time at Beaubourg; the passing of the
debt into an exponential mode and the possibility of a financial crash in Times
Square.
In fact, the debt will never be paid. No debt will ever be paid. The final
counts will never take place. If time is counted [si le temps now est comptd], the
missing money is beyond counting [au-d& de toute comptabilitk]. The United
States is already virtually unable to pay, but this will have no consequence whatsoever. There will be no judgment day for this virtual bankruptcy. It is simple enough
to enter an exponential or virtual mode to become free of any responsibility, since
there is no reference any more, no referential world to serve as a measuring norm.
The disappearance of the referential universe is a brand new phenomenon.
When one looks at the billboard on Broadway, with its flying figures, one has the
impression that the debt takes off to reach the stratosphere. This is simply the figure
in light years of a galaxy that vanishes in the cosmos. The speed of liberation of the
debt is just like one of earth’s satellites. That’s exactly what it is: the debt circulates
on its own orbit, with its own trajectory made up of capital, which, from now on, is
free of any economic contingency and moves about in a parallel universe (the
acceleration of capital has exonerated money of its involvements with the everyday
universe of production,
value and utility). It is not even an orbital universe: it is
rather ex-orbital, ex-centered, ex-centric, with only a very faint probability
that, one
day, it might rejoin ours. That’s why no debt will ever be paid. At most, it can be
bought over at a bargain price to later be placed back on a debt market (public
debt, national debt, global debt) where it will have become a currency of exchange.
Since there is no likely settlement date, the debt has an incalculable [inestimable]
value. As long as it hangs like that over our heads with no reference whatsoever, it
also serves as our only guarantee against time. Unlike the countdown which
Digital
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39
signifies the end of time, an indefinitely
deferred debt is the guarantee that even
time is inexhaustible.. . And we really need a virtual time insurance since our future
is about to dissipate in real time.
Clearing the debt, settling the accounts, cancelling the payments by the Third
World.. . Don’t even think about it! We only live because of this imbalance, of the
proliferation
and the promise of infinity created by the debt. The global or planetary debt has, of course, no meaning in the classical terms of stock or credit. But it
acts as our true collective credit line, a symbolic credit system whereby people,
corporations,
nations are attached to one another by default. People are tied to each
other (this goes for the banks too) by means of their virtual bankruptcy, just as
accomplices are tied by their crime. Everyone is certain to exist for the other in the
shadow of an unamendable and insolvable debt for, as of today, the total amount of
the global debt is much larger than the total amount of available capital. Thus, the
debt no longer has any meaning but to unite all civilized beings to a same destiny
served on credit. A similar thing takes place with nuclear weapons whose global
capacity is much bigger than what is needed to destroy the entire planet. Yet, it
remains as a way of uniting all of humankind
to a same destiny marked by threat
and deterrence.
At least, it is easier now to understand why the Americans are so eager to
advertise their domestic debt in such a spectacular manner. The Times Square
initiative is designed to make the state feel guilty about the way it runs the country,
and intended to warn the citizens about the imminent collapse of the financial and
public spheres. But, of course, the exorbitant figure deprives the billboard of any
meaning (even figures have lost their credit line). In fact, this is nothing more than
a gigantic advertising campaign and, by the way, this is why the neon “billboard”
is
made to look like a triumphant
stock exchange quotation that has gone over the
top. And people stare at it, fascinated by the spectacle of a world performance (in
the meantime, people rarely look at the numerical time clock at Beaubourg to
witness the gradual ending of this century). People are collectively in the same
situation as that Russian test pilot who, until the very last second, was able to see
his airplane drop and crash on the video system of his Tupolev jet. Did he have the
ultimate reflex to look at the image before dying? He could have imagined his last
living moments in virtual reality. Did the image survive the pilot, even for a tenth
of a second, or vice versa? Does virtual reality live on after the catastrophe of the
real world?
Our true artificial satellites are the global debt, the flows of capital, and the
nuclear loads that circle around the earth in an orbital dance. As pure artifacts, with
a sidereal velocity and an instantaneous capacity of reversal, they have found their
true place. This place is even more extraordinary than the Stock Exchange, banks,
or nuclear stockpiles: it is that of the orbit, where they rise and set like artificial
suns.
Some of the most recent of these exponentially
developing parallel worlds are
the Internet and the many worldwide webs of information.
Each day, in real time,
the irresistible growth (or outgrowth perhaps) of information
could be measured
there, with numbers representing the millions of people and the billions of opera-
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Digital
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tions that they cover. Information
now expands to such an extent that it no longer
has anything to do with gaining knowledge. Information’s immense potential will
never be redeemed and it will never be able to achieve its finality. It’s just like the
debt. Information
is just as insolvable as the debt and we’ll never be able to get rid
of it. Collecting data, accumulating and transporting information
all over the world
are the same thing as compiling an unpayable debt. And here too, since proliferating information
is larger than the needs and capacities of any individual,
and of the
human species in general, it has no other meaning but that of binding humankind
to a destiny of cerebral automation and mental underdevelopment.
It is clear that if
a small dose of information
reduces ignorance, a massive dose of artificial intelligence can only reinforce the belief that our natural intelligence is deficient. The
worst thing that can happen to an individual is to know too much and, thus, to fall
beyond’knowledge.
It is exactly the same thing with responsibility
and emotional
capacity. The perpetual intimation
of the media in terms of violence, suffering, and
catastrophe, far from exalting som’e sort of collective solidarity, only demonstrates
our real impotence and drives us to panic and resentment.
Caught in their autonomous and exponential logic, all these parallel worlds
are like time bombs. It is more obvious with nuclear weapons, but it is also true of
the debt and capital flows. The smallest intrusion of these worlds into ours, the least
noticeable encounter between their orbits and ours, would immediately disrupt the
fragile equilibrium
of our exchanges and economies. This would (or will) be the
same with the total liberation of information,
which could transform us into free
radicals desperately searching for our molecules in a scanty cyberspace.
Reason would probably insist that we include these worlds into our homogeneous universe: nuclear weapons would have a peaceful use, all the debts would be
erased, all the flows of capital would be reinvested in terms of social well-being, and
information
would contribute to knowledge. This is, no doubt, a dangerous utopia.
Let these worlds remain parallel to ours, let their threats hang up in the air: their excentricity is what protects us. For, no matter how parallel and ex-centric they may
be, they are in fact ours. We are the ones who created them and placed them
beyond our reach, as an ersatz of transcendence. We are the ones who placed them
on their orbits as some sort of catastrophic imaginaries. And it is perhaps better this
way. Our society was once solidified by a utopia of progress. It now exists because of
a catastrophic imaginary.
Translated
Ly Francois Deb&
Originally
published
as “‘Dette mondiale et uniuers
paralL?/e”in
Liberation, Par& January 15,
1996
Cybetwar,Godand
Television
An Interview with Paul Virilio
Louise Wilson
Beneath Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine
And our love
Must I remember
Joy followed always after rain
Let night come sound the hour
Time draws in I remain
htractfiom Mirabeau Bridge 4 Guilhme
Apollinaire, quoted by Paul viriho at the beginning of
the interview.
Louise Wihon: First of all, I’d like to say that I approach
your work as a visual artist.
Paul V?rilio: But, I always write with images. I cannot write a book if I don’t have
images.
I believe that philosophy is part of literature, and not the reverse. Writing is
not possible without images. Yet, images don’t have to be descriptive; they can be
concepts, and Deleuze and I often discuss this point. Concepts are mental images.
Wilson: In the text The Museum ofAccidents, you write about the problem of
positivism facing a museology of science, and the need for “the science of an antiscience museum.”
Virilio: In The Museum ofAccidents, I say at the end of the article that television is
the actual museum. In the beginning, I say: a museum of accidents is needed, and
the reader imagines a building with accidents inside. But at the end, I say: no, this
museum already exists, it’s television.
This is more than a metaphor: the cinema was certainly an art, but television
can’t be, because it is the museum of accidents. In other words, its art is to be the
site where all accidents happen. But that’s its only art.
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Digital
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Wilson: So in talking about the simulation industry and its function to “expose the
accident in order not to be exposed to it,” could you say more about that in its
relationship to television?
Krilio: One exposes the accident in order not to be exposed to the accident. It’s an
inversion. There is a French expression that says: to be exposed to an accident, to
cross a street without looking at the cars means exposing oneself to be run over.
This is more than a play with words, it’s fundamental. For instance, when a painter
exhibits his work, one says: he exposes his work. Similarly, when we cross the street,
we expose ourselves to a car accident.
And television exposes the world to the accident. The world is exposed to
accidents through television. The editor of the New York Times was recently interviewed in Le Nouvel Observateur, and he said something that I really agree with:
television is a media of crisis, which means that television is a media of accidents.
Television can only destroy. In this respect, and even though he was a friend of
mine, I believe that McLuhan was completely wrong (in his idyllic view of television).
Wihon: But surely the commodification
through simulation?
of the accident happened
before television
vi:rilio: To start with, the simulator is an object in itselt which is different from
televison and leads to cyberspace. The US Air Force flight simulator - the first
sophisticated simulators were created by the US Air Force - has been used in order
to save gas on real flights by training pilots on the ground. Thus there is a cyberspace vision: one doesn’t fly in real space, one creates a poor cyberspace, with
headphones, etc.. . it is a different logic. In a way, the simulator is closer to cyberspace than televison. It creates a different world. So, of course, the simulator quickly
became a simulator of accidents, but not only that: it started simulating actual flight
hours, and these hours have been counted as real hours to evaluate the experience of
pilots. Simulated flight hours and real flight hours became equivalent, and this was
cyberspace, not the accident but something else, or rather the accident of reality.
What is accidented is reality, Virtuality will destroy reality. So, it’s some kind of
accident, but an accident of a very different nature.
The accident is not the accident. For instance, if I let this glass fall, is it an
accident? No, it’s the reality of the glass that is accidented, not the glass itself. The
glass is certainly broken and no longer exists, but with a flight simulator, what is
accidented is the reality of the glass, and not the glass itself: what is accidented is
the reality of the whole world. Cyberspace is an accident of the real. Virtual reality
is the accident of reality itself
W&on:
But then simulation
doesn’t really pretend
to be the glass?
virifio: This is a little hard to explain. We have a sense of reality which is sustained
by a physical sensation. Right now, I am holding a bottle: this is reality, With a data
glove, I could hold a virtual bottle. Cybersex is similar: it is an accident of sexual
reality, perhaps the most extraordinary
accident, but still an accident. I would be
tempted to say: the accident is shifting. It no longer occurs in matter, but in light or
Digital
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43
in images. A Cyberspace is a light-show. Thus, the accident is in light, not in
matter. The creation of a virtual image is a form of accident. This explains why
virtual reality is a cosmic accident. It’s the accident of the real.
I disagree with my friend Baudrillard on the subject of simulation. To the
word simulation, I prefer the one substitution. This is a real glass, this is no simulation. When I hold a virtual glass with a data glove, this is no simulation, but
substitution.
Here lies the big difference between Baudrillard and myself: I don’t
believe in simulationism,
I believe that the word is already old-fashioned.
As I see it,
new technologies are substituting a virtual reality for an actual reality. And this is
more than a phase: it’s a definite change. We are entering a world where there won’t
be one but two realities, just like we have two eyes or hear bass and treble tones, just
like we now have stereoscopy and stereophony: there will be two realities: the
actual, and the virtual. Thus there is no simulation, but substitution.
Reality has
become symmetrical. The splitting of reality in two parts is a considerable event
which goes far beyond simulation.
Wihon: What about early cinema as a primitive
cinema in fright?
form of this, when people left the
W&o: Unlike Serge Daney or Deleuze, I think that cinema and television have
nothing in common. There is a breaking point between photography
and cinema
on the one hand and television and virtual reality on the other hand. The simulator
is the stage in-between television and virtual reality, a moment, a phase. The
simulator is a moment that leads to cyberspace, that is to say, to the process because
of which we now have two bottles instead of one. I might not see this virtual bottle,
but I can feel it. It is settled within reality. This explains why the word virtual reality
is more important than the word cyberspace, which is more poetic. As far as gender
is concerned, there are now two men and two women, real and virtual. People make
fun of cybersex, but it’s really something to take into account: it is a drama, a split
of the human being! The human being can now be changed into some kind of
spectrum or ghost who has sex at a distance. That is really scary because what used
to be the most intimate and the most important relationship to reality is being split.
This is no simulation but the coexistence of two separate worlds. One day the
virtual world might win over the real world.
These new technologies try to make virtual reality more powerful than actual
reality, which is the true accident. The day when virtual reality becomes more
powerful than reality will be the day of the big accident. Mankind never experienced such an extraordinary
accident.
Wilson: What is your own feeling about that?
virilio:
I’m not scared, just interested.
This is drama. Art is drama. Any relationship to art is also a relationship to
death. Creation exists only in regard to destruction. Creation is against destruction.
You cannot dissociate birth from death, creation from destruction, good from evil.
Thus any art is a form of drama standing between the two extreme poles of birth
and death, just like life is drama. This is not sad, because to be alive means to be
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Digital
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mortal, to pass through. And art is alive because it is mortal. Except that now, art
has become more than painting, sculpture or music: art is more than Van Gogh
painting a landscape or Wagner composing an opera. The whole of reality itself has
become the object of art. To someone like Zurbaran, who paints still lifes,, lemons
and pears are the objects of art. But to the electronics engineer who works on the
technologies of virtual reality, the whole reality has become the object of art, with a
possibility to substitute the virtual with the real.
Wilson: Is there a transcendence
of the body?
Vhilio: That is difficult to say. First, what is under consideration
is not only the
body itself, but the environment
of the body as well. The notion of transcendence is
a complex one, but it is true that there is something divine in this new technology.
The research on cyberspace is a quest for God. To be God. To be here and there.
For example, when I say: “I’m looking at you, I can see you”, that means: “I can see
you because I can’t see what is behind you: I see you through the frame I am
drawing. I can’t see inside you”. If I could see you from beneath or from behind, I
would be God. I can see you because my back and my sides are blind. One can’t
even imagine what it would be like to see inside people.
The technologies of virtual reality are attempting to make us see from
beneath, from inside, from behind.. . as if we were God. I am a Christian, and even
though I know we are talking about metaphysics and not about religion, I must say
that cyberspace is acting like God and deals with the idea of God who is, sees and
hears everything.
Wilson: What will happen when virtual
reality takes the upper hand?
Virilio: It already has. If you look at the Gulf War or new military technologies,
and technologies of
they are moving towards cyberwar.,.G’ Most video-technologies
simulation have been used for war. For example, video was created after the Second
World War in order to radio-control
planes and aircraft carriers. Thus video came
with the war. It took twenty years before it became a means of expression for artists.
Similarly, television was first conceived to be used as some kind of telescope, not for
broadcasting. Originally, Sworkin, the inventor of television, wanted to settle
cameras on rockets so that it would be possible to watch the sky.
Wilson: So it was only by a matter of degrees that the Gulf War became the “virtual
war”? It was live broadcasting that really effected this change?
VMio: The high level of the technologies used during the Gulf War makes this
conflict quite unique, but the very process of de-realization of the war started in
1945. War occured in Kuwait, but it also occured on the screens of the entire world.
The site of defeat or victory was not the ground, but the screen. (I wrote a book
called Desert Screen on the Gulf War.) Thus it becomes obvious that television is a
media of crisis, a museum of accidents.
Wilson: This must surely result in some psychic crisis?
Digital
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45
Virilio: It is as if I was to take my eye, to throw it away, and still be able to see.
Video is originally a de-corporation,
a disqualification
of the sensorial organs which
are replaced by machines.. . The eye and the hand are replaced by the data glove,
the body is replaced by a data suit, sex is replaced by cybersex. All the qualities of
the body are transferred to the machine. This is a subject I discuss in my last book,
The Art of The Engine.
We haven’t adjusted yet, we are forgetting our body, we are losing it. This is
an accident of the body, a de-corporation.
The body is torn and disintegrated.
Wilson: With
removed.
the Gulf War, there was such indomprehension
because it was so
Mdio: The Gulf War was the first “live” war. World War Two was a world war in
space. It spread from Europe to Japan, to the Soviet Union, etc. World War Two
was quite different from World War One which was geographically
limited to
Europe. But in the case of the Gulf War, we are dealing with a war which is ex. tremely local in space, but global in time, since it is the first “live” war. And to
those, like my friend Baudrillard, who say that this war did not actually occur, I
reply: this war may not have occurred in the actual global space, but it did occur in
global time. And this thanks to CNN and The Pentagon. This is a new form of war,
and all future wars, all future accidents will be live wars and live accidents.
Wilson: How will this removal affect people?
VXio: Firstly, a d e- realization, the accident of the real. It’s not one, two, hundreds
or thousands of people who are being killed, but the whole reality itself. In a way,
everybody is wounded from the wound of the real. This phenomenon
is similar to
madness. The mad person is wounded by his or her distorted relationship to the
real. Imagine that all of a sudden I am convinced that I am Napoleon: I am no
longer Virilio, but Napoleon. My reality is wounded. Virtual reality leads to a
similar de-realization.
However, it no longer works only at the scale of individuals,
as in madness, but at the scale of the world.
By the way, this might sound like drama, but it is not the end of the world: it is
both sad and happy, nasty and kind. It is a lot of contradictory
things at the same
time. And it is complex.
Wilson: How can we address this loss?
Virifio: The true problem with virtual reality is that orientation
is no longer
possible. We have lost our points of reference to orient ourselves. The de-realized
man is a disoriented man. In my last book, The Art of The Engine, I conclude by
pointing at a recent American discovery, the GPS (Global Positioning System)
which is the second watch. The first watch tells you what time it is, the second one
tells you where you are. If I had a GPS, I could know where this table stands in
relation to the whole world, with an amazing precision, thanks to satellites. This is
extraordinary:
in the 15th century, we invented the first watch, and now we have
invented the GPS to know where we are.
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Digital
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When you find yourself in the middle of virtual reality, you don’t know where
you are, but with this machine, you can know. This watch has been used for ships
and not only can it tell you where you are, but also it can tell others where you are:
it works in the two ways. The question you’re asking is really interesting. For one
can’t even know what it means to be lost in reality. For instance, it is easy to know
whether you are lost or not in the Sahara desert, but to be lost in reality! This is
much more complex! Since there are two realities, how can we say where we are? We
are far away from simulation, we have reached substitution! I believe this is, all in
the same time, a fantastic, a very scary and an extraordinary
world.
Wihon: But to return to this question
of transcendanie..
.
vi:riLio: All in all, I believe that this divine dimension raises the question of
transcendance, that is to say the question of the Judeo-Christian
God for instance.
People agree to say that it is rationality and science which have eliminated what is
called magic and religion. But ultimately, the ironic outcome of this technoscientific development is a renewed need for the idea of God. Many people question their religious identity today, not necessarily by thinking of converting to
Judaism or to Islam: it’s just that technologies seriously challenge the status of the
human being. All technologies converge toward the same spot, they all lead to a
Deus ex Machina, a machine-God.
In a way, technologies have negated the transcendental God in order to invent the machine-God.
However, these two gods raise
similar questions.
As you can see, we are still within t:he museum of accidents. That’s a huge, cosmic
accident, and television, which made reality explode, is part of it. I agree with what
Einstein used to say about the three bombs: there are three bombs. The first one is
the atomic bomb, which disintegrates reality, the second one is the digital or
computer bomb, which destroys the principle of reality itself - not the actual
object - and rebuilds it, and finally the third bomb is the demographic
one. Some
experts have found out that in five thousand years from now, the weight of the
population
will be heavier than the: weight of the planet. That means that humanity
will constitute a planet of its own!
Wilson: Do you always separate the body from technology?
virilio: No. The body is extremely important to me, because it is a planet. For
instance, if you compare Earth and an astronomer, you will see that the man is a
planet. There is a very interesting Jewish proverb that says: “If you save one man,
you save the world: That’s a teverse version of the idea of the Messiah: one man can
save the world, but to save a man is to save the world. The world and man are
identical. This is why racism is the most stupid thing in the world.
You are a universe, and so am I; we are four universes here. And there are
millions of others around us. Thus the body is not simply the combination
of
dance, muscles, body-building,
strength and sex: it is a universe. What brought me
to Christianity
is Incarnation,
not Ressurection. Because Man is God, and God is
Man, the world is nothing but the world of Man - or Woman. So, to separate
mind from body doesn’t make any sense. To a materialist, matter is essential: a stone
Digital
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47
is a stone, a mountain is a mountain, water is water and earth is earth. As far as I
am concerned, I am a materialist of the body, which means that the body is the
basis of all my work.
To me, dance is an extraordinary
thing, more extraordinary
than most people
usually think. Dance preceded writing, speaking and music. When mute people
speak their body language, it is true speaking rather than handicap, this is the first
word and the first writing. Thus to me, the body is fundamental. The body, and the
territory of course, for there cannot be an animal body without a territorial body:
three bodies are grafted over each other: the territorial body - the planet, the social
body - the couple - and the animal body - you and me. And technology splits
this unity, leaving us without a sense of where we are. This, too, is de-realization.
There is a buddhist proverb which I like a lot. It says: “Everybody deserves mercy”.
That means that every body is holy. This is to answer the body question.
Technologies first equipped the territorial body with bridges, aqueducts,
railways, highways, airports, etc.. . Now that the most powerful technologies are
becoming tiny - microtechnologies
- all technologies can invade the body. These
micro-machines
will feed the body. Research is being conducted in order to create
additional memory for instance. For the time being, technologies are colonizing our
body through implants. We started with human implants, but research leads us to
microtechnological
implants.
The territorial body has been polluted by roads, elevators, etc. Similarly, our
animal body starts being polluted. Ecology no longer deals with water, flora,
wildlife and air only. It deals with the body itself as well. It is comparable with an
invasion: technology is invading our body because of miniaturisation.
[Referring to
the interviewer’s microphone]
Next time you come you won’t even ask - you’ll just
throw a bit of dust on the table!
There is a great science-fiction short story, it’s too bad I can’t remember the
name of its author, in which a camera has been invented which can be carried by
flakes of snow. Cameras are inseminated into artificial snow which is dropped by
planes, and when the snow falls, there are eyes everywhere. There is no blind spot
left.
IK.&xz: But what shall we dream of when everything
becomes visible?
Krilio: We’ll dream of being blind. This is the art of the engine. Art used to be
painting, sculpture, music, etc, but now, all technology has become art. Of course,
this form of art is still very primitive, but it is slowly replacing reality. This is what I
call the art of the engine. For instance, when I take the TGV (Train a Grande
L%esse) in France, I love watching the landscape: this landscape, as well as works by
Picasso or Klee, is art. The engine makes the art of the engine. Wim Wenders made
road movies, but what is the engine of a road movie? It’s a car, like in Paris, Texas.
Dromoscopy. Now all we have to do to enter the realm of art is to take a car. Many
engines made History.
Wihon: Finally to return to the accident! Is it possible to see the body itself as a
simulator? (Within medical aerospace research, for example, the body’s own
accident, that of motion sickness, can be eradicated.)
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Virifio: The body has a dimension of simulation. The learning process, for instance:
when one learns how to drive a car or a van, once in the van, one feels completely
lost. But then, once you have learnt how to drive, the whole van is in your body, It
is integrated into your body. Another example: a man who pilots a Jumbo Jet will
ultimately feel that the Boeing is entering his body. But what is going on now, or
should happen in one or two generations, is the disintegration
of the world. Real
time ‘live’ technologies, cyberreality, will permit the incorporation
of the world
within oneself. One will be able to read the entire world, just like during the Gulf
War. And I will have become the world. The body of the world and my body will
be one. Once again, this is a divine vision; and this is what the military are looking
for. Earth is already being integrated into the Pentagon, and the man in the Pentagon is already piloting the world war - or the Gulf War - as if he were a captain
whose huge boat would have become his own body. Thus the body simulates the
relationship to the world.
Wilson: Are you suggesting
the human
body will disappear
in all senses of the word?
Virilio: We haven’t reached that point yet: what I have described is the end, or a
vision of the end. What will prevail is this will to reduce the world to the point
where one could possess it. All military technologies reduce the world to nothing.
And since military technologies are advanced technologies, what they actually
sketch today is the future of the civil realm. But this, too, is an accident.
When I was a young soldier, I was asked to drive a huge van while I had
never driven a car. Here I am, driving through a German village (this takes place
during the occupation) and there was this painter who had settled his ladder on the
side of the street. I thought that my big van was going to crash his ladder. That
didn’t happen. I just passed through.
Vivisectingthe 90s
An Interview with Jean Baudrillard
Choline Bdydrd md Grdhdm Knight
Caroline Bayardand Graham Knight: Your relation to McLuhan is interesting, the
more so since few critics have analysed it, although they have often commented on
it. What is the role of the strong presence of the visual, so real in your texts, in
relation to the notion of distance, or of obscenity, and in relation to irony as
distance? It is clear that the visual would be necessary to separate and distance an
imaginary on which sense is founded. But how does one treat the question of the
differentiation
of image and sound, the latter being a much more supple, fluid,
floating medium than the former?
Jan Bawh&rd:
I have some difhculty replying to this question because sound, the
sphere of sound, the acoustic sphere, audio, is really more alien to me than the
visual. It is true there is a feeling [word spoken in English] about the visual, or
rather for the image and the concept itself, whereas sound is less familiar to me. I
have less perception, less analytic perception, of this aspect. That is not to say that I
would not make a distinction between noise and sound, but ultimately, in terms of
this ambient world’s hyptrreality, this noosphere, I see it much more as a visualization of the world rather than its hypersonorization.
What can I say about the difference between the two? I have the impression
that cutting across the world of McLuhan - he too is very much oriented to the
visual, of course, in spite of the fact that he was, I believe, a musician - there is a
small problem, which is that the different sensorial,’ perceptual registers tend, in this
media noosphere, to conflate, to fuse together into a kind of depolarization
of
sensory domains. We speak quite rightly today of the audio-visual; we couple them
together in some sort, some kind of amalgam or “patchwork”.
Perhaps I am led to
view space in this way by my lesser sensitivity to the acoustic, but it seems to me
that everything is summed up in a logistic which integrates all the perceptual
domains in a way even more undifferentiated
than before. Everything is now
received in a manner that is indistinct, virtually indistinct, in fact.
The virtual is the kind of concept that is a bit cosmopolitan,
if one can call it
that; or postmodern, I do not know. In that respect, it is not about the gaze but the
visual, it is not about the acoustic, but the audio. Besides, for McLuhan in fact,
everything is ultimately reduced to the tactile. Tactility is really that register of sense
which is of the order of contact, not of physical or sensual contact of course, but a
sort of communication
contact where, right now in fact, there is a short-circuit
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between receiver and sender. I mean directly in individual perception, not only in
the world of the media but in our bodily way of living, there is a form of
indistinction,
of amalgamation,
of indifferentiation
where all the perceptions arrive
en bloc and are reduced to a tactile ambiance. In the latter there would be a lesser
differentiation
of registers, a lesser singularity of the gaze, a lesser singularity of
sound, of music.
So, that is all one can say. That said, within this state of affairs of course there
,is perhaps still a way to master the tactile world. I think that McLuhan himself
thought so in every way; he thought that there really was a strategy of the tactile
world, and that it is not just any one. It is not at all a question of saying that it is
insignificant,
but simply that it is more undifferentiated.
Bayard/Knight:
I remember what you wrote about Westmoreland
and Coppola in
.%&acres, but re-reading your text some thirteen years later, I wonder whether the
real question may not be somewhere else. If, quite simply, neither one
(Westmoreland),
nor the other (Coppola), had the last word because there is no
such thing as the last word, because history continues, just as stories do and our
history may be just this, a long rewriting process, prolonged ad infinitum, strewn
with glosses/counter-glosses.
With John Johnston, on the other hand (in Gane,
16I), you read History as the re-actualisation
of a past in which we all are accusers
and defenders, as well as complicioous. Later, in CooLMemories 11, you interpret it as
a stoic temptation,
that of a Marcus-Aurelius,
neither resigned, nor hurried in his
late Antiquity, waiting by the sea. Are all of those two facets a reflection of your
sensitivity? Which of the three is closer to you presently?
Baudrifkzrd: I am not a historian. I do not have an historical perception of events.
But I would say that I have a mystical reading of them and that history for me,
would be a long narrative which I tend to mythologize. Curiously, I am going back
here to an interesting hypothesis, that of an English naturalist of the 19th century,
called Philip Henry Gosse, who was a paleolontologist
and archeologist. He was
studying fossils found in geological sediments and his hypothesis, as he was a
Christian and a reader of the Bible, was that creation had taken place ex-nihilo and
the world created as such five thousand years before his time. Thus God had created
at once fossils, geological sediments, exactly as they were in the 18th century, and
he had created them as simulacra, as a trompe-Lbeil in order to provide humanity which might have been traumatized by such a brutal creation -with
a history,
hence a past. Therefore God would have provided human beings with a retrospective past by creating fossils and geological sediments. And he would have created
them as such, with utmost exactitude so that people may study them scientifically,
although their past had thus been invented. This brings me specifically to Russell’s
paradox, which suggests that the world as such could have been created yesterday,
and everything in it could be interpreted as retrospective simulation. Of course, this
is a paradox, but for myself I would tend to use such a paradox. This where one
ends up in a real or hyper-real situation, that of the history of historical narratives,
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of historiography
which do pose a historical question about the re-invention
of past
history through the historian’s discourse, a discourse which, by definition
is a reconstruction.
In a way, that reconstruction
is also necessarily artificial.
The tendency today is not to regress, but to go back to the those moments
which preceded that history, as if it were taking us backward, a process which allows
questions as cruel as: “Did the Holocaust actually take place, did gas chambers
really exist?” One question, latent within our contemporary
imagination,
is its
incapacity really to understand history, to capture its responsibility, its finality and
therefore to ask such a query which is absurd, but which constitutes the ultimate
test about a past event. Did it actually take place? What proof do we have about it?
Of course we have a multitude of objective, real proofs, but what does one do
with historical reality in a system which itself has become virtual?
As for history, well I cannot situate it within a realistic framework, nor can I
integrate it within a moral, or even political, reference system. There may be a
philosophical
moral of history, but I do not know what my position would be on
that score. It would have to be one of undecidability
about what history is. As
history today enters into the same domain of indeterminate,
undefined interpretations or into the principle of indeterminacy, And this not only applies to the past,
but also to the future as well as to the present. At the moment, we live in a sort of
uninterrupted
time, especially as we move towards the crystallisation of time in each
instant, as we keep losing our sense of any objective reference. I do not want to
defend history, I only observe a series of problems.
&yard/Knight:
I might be tempted to say that your simultaneously
ironic and
perspicacious scrutiny of the social and political effects of simulation has been your
gift to the end of this century. What made such a scrutiny vulnerable, for some, has
not been the epistemological
fallibility u p on which it grounded itself (as that could
be as a demonstration
of humility coming from the end of an empire, assuming
such is the case with the western world), but rather, it has been your refusal to
recognize that CNN, the Murdochs and Maxwells of this world, dead or alive, do
exert a remarkable control over the images which our eyes look at day after day,
whatever those media empires’ powerlessness to resolve even our most insignificant
problems be. Yes this did puzzle a number of us. While I do recognize that our
referents have been transformed by these images’ interaction, I have enormous
difficulty to admit that reference itself could have sunk below the horizon of our
collective anomie. Bodies are killed, entire cities, or small towns and communities
disappear, between Sarajevo and southern Iraq. No one denies the simulation effect
which our information
networks rely upon, but it is your denial of reality, of
personal experience initiated by those simulations which disturbs me. Had you
’
been in Baghdad in February 199 1, or in Sarajevo these past two years, might you
not have hesitated before casting reference into the dustbin of history?
Bauddud
Yes, I would not be irresponsible enough to claim an extra-territorial
position. When I speak, I do so from a given place. I do have roots. Obviously, all
radicals do. I have mine, but those are not ideological references.
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Sarajevo, since you are talking about it, reminds me of a media incident,
precisely. Bernard-Henri
Levy went there to do a TV programme during one of the
worst bombings and he interviewed a woman, a librarian, who spoke to him and
said: “I wish Baudrillard were here to see what transparency really is.” Well, she was
doing me a great honour, remembering what I have written about the transparency
of evil, the tram-apparition
of evil, specifically in a universe which pretends to be a
New World Order whence evil, at least theoretically, has been eliminated. She felt
this was a further illustration of what I have written about the transparency of evil.
Let us talk about this. Such a perspective may arouse a certain misunderstanding.
One finds oneself within the virtuality of goodness, of positivity, whereas, on the
contrary, within such a system evil transpires everywhere. And that is the transapparition of evil. Evil is not that through which one sees, but that which sees
through everything, which goes through, transpires through Good, as well. And at
that specific time, one notices a perverse conversion of all positive effects, of all
political constructions which finally, through some perverse and magical effect,
become evil. So that, ultimately, all of those events taking place in Central Europe,
the liberation of these countries, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Sarajevo, are a terrifying
demonstration
of this catastrophic,, recurrent scheme wherein evil takes place. And I
do not understand evil as suffering, as pain. I define it, rather, as negativity, as the
diabolical nature of things when they are reversed into their opposite, so that they
never reach their finality, nor even go beyond it and thus become, at that specific
time, monstrous. A good part of monstrosity, in our banality, is just that: all
phenomena become extreme. Because of the media, our scientific means, our
knowhow, progress all take an uncontrollable,
inhuman dimension. Evil, for me is
just that form.
I do not interpret it on the level of experienced pain, in which case I have
nothing to say, any more than anybody else, except from a moral viewpoint, but I
do not want to consider that. I interpret it not by bracketing it off, but by
relativizing it. And I can only write while doing this in my own life. But I do not
want to be more specific. There is :alogic about writing, about thought, about
philosophizing,
yes, a stoic logic in that sense. One cannot add pathos, a subjective
dimension, nor a collective sense of things to the vision one may have of the world,
as well as of nature. Although, of course, when I say this I am quite aware that such
a position is provocative, paradoxical and ultimately unacceptable. I do understand
people’s anger against such a position. And it is also true that of all this does not
leave me indifferent.
One can participate physically and morally in collective grief
and since we are talking about this, I also believe that it is a Stoic’s duty, if there is
one, not to sublimate, not to abstract, not to distance oneself, but to say: such is the
rule of the game and this is how I play it. To maintain this ultimate ironic possibility may be the essence of grief, the obsession of grief, the therapeutic obsession to
dispose of evil, but those may not constitute the last word of history. I cannot say
much more about it although I do recognize that such a position exposes itself to
very serious charges.
BayardlKnight:
The question which comes most easily to mind, in line with what
Caroline [Bayard] was asking you, relates to what I would call “the morning after.”
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To offer one’s eye may well be seductive, overlooking the physical discomfort of the
initial moment, but what happens the next day when one finds oneself blind in one
eye? Is not the choice obvious between the suffering of seduction and eternal
infirmity? Bodies do obliterate other losses.
Buudrihrd: Stories do not have a day after; they are made to be used up. There too,
if you take things literally that becomes unacceptable. Ultimately, right, one is in
the realm of cruelty, in a certain sense. And what now could happen the next day if
not vengeance? In every respect sacrifice has no final end in that sense. It has no day
after, in the sense that it has no end since it reproduces itself, Each extends it. In
every way, we know well enough that it is a little game, like money that one wins or
loses in a game. Money won in a game does not leave the game. It must be burnt
up, consumed like that, in the game. And it seems,to be the same thing in a system
of gift-giving, of sacrifice, where there is no day after, no point at which one would
settle accounts. No point at which one would say: “So, I have been robbed. I am
the loser. I have been sacrificed and I must avenge myself.” No, one keeps on
playing. One can perhaps reply to your question “what happens the day after?” by
saying that at that point one rips out the other eye, and solves the problem!
BayardhGnight: How is the concept of strategy used? It is implicit
that it connotes a
form of subjectivity, and yet it is used in such a way that subjectivity is undermined,
or placed in a context where it is made volatile or fragile. Moreover, strategy being
originally a military metaphor, to what extent does it retain today martial connotations which complicate its sense even more?
Baudrilkzrd: Yes, there I agree with you. The term “strategy” represents an opportunity because it is apt. It is a nice term. It has form, it speaks to the imaginary. It has
a form of mastery and, at the same time, it is deployed within space. But it no
longer means anything great in my opinion, because, for there to be a strategy, there
has to be a subject of the strategy, someone who has a will, a representation of the
outcome. There has to be a finality, If the strategy has to become logistically chancy,
it is no longer a strategy properly speaking. Thus, one can still use this term in a
metaphorical
sense perhaps, but it has certainly lost its military reference, and
perhaps even its reference to a finality.
When I use it in the expression “fatal strategies”, it is clear that it no longer
has any finality in itself. It is a type of fatal process, a process in which there is
certainly no more subject, no more subjectivity. Fatal strategy for me is a strategy of
the object. Which means nothing, to be sure! How could an object have a strategy?
It would be absurd. But all the same, I like to apply things that are paradoxical. I
also speak of objective illusion. Illusion, if it is contrary to a truth principle, cannot
be based on objectivity. But I like to bring these two terms together all the same to
create a clash between them. Thus fatal strategy is, effectively, an expression which
describes a process, a reversibility that is in the order of things, and this is, at the
moment, truly delirious, fatal. We are all inside it, but we are nevertheless a
vectorial element of the thing, though not in the sense of subjects. At this point it
has to be said that this supposes such relativity in the subject-object relation that it
is that which becomes fatal.
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We witness the loss of subjectivity on the one hand, and the intervention
of
the object itself in the game in a fatal, decisive and determinant way. And the fact
that it is no longer the subject that possesses things when, properly speaking, there
is only a strategy of the subject, the fact of speaking of the strategy of objects is a
paradox, a kind of metaphorical
transfer of things. But, as discourse itself is so
grounded in subjectivity in this sense, we do not have an objective discourse
available in the sense I intend it, which has nothing to do with scientificity, but
which would be the discourse of the object. Well, we do not have it. What we have
is the event itself, the flow of the world itself, and there is, if not a strategy, at least a
rule of the game. Regardless, I think that there is a rule. But I am not the one who
is going to say that. It is truly unreadable; it is a secret. But somewhere there is a
logic in the unfolding of things, even if it is a crazy logic. Let us call it strategy. Why
not! It is, all the same, the-,way that the discourse of sense tries to describe nonsense. But clearly, one will always remain between the two. There will not be any
objectivity there in the scientific sense of the term. That is not possible.
Baydrd/Knight:
It seems clear at this point that a younger generation of philosophers, such as Luc Ferry, Alain Renaut, of social critics, such as Michel Maffesoli, or
even of less young ones, such as Alain Touraine (Retour de Ihcteur, 1988, trans. The
Return of the Actor, 1990; Edgar Morin, Pour un nouveau commencement, 199 l),
have focused 6n the return of this same subject. Certainly not in the same terms as
their humanist predecessors, or their foundationalist
ones, but upon th’e subject
nevertheless, let us leave it undefined for the moment.. . I found it quite striking
that in your Coo/Memories (1987), you began to sketch some of his/her defining
features (“What has been exuberantly demolished is being reconstructed sadly”).
Except that, in this particular case, sadness is yours only and the authors mentioned
above do not appear to share your grief. Are you interpreting
their efforts as a selfdelusional journey? Or alternatively, are you interpreting
them as a curious ecological process and a re-cycling temptation for the end of a century: a bit of
postmodernity,
a sprinkle of liberalism, a dab of Kantian ethics with, at the end, a
solid dose of optimism while facing the grief of the rest of the world? Maffesoli and
Ferry are notably more optimistic than their elders, Morin and Touraine are more
prudent. What is your position upon this so-called return of the subject?
Baudrihrd:
In Maffesoli’s case, you are dealing with a very specific subject, since
the latter is inscribing his position within a form of tribality. To me it looks like a
tribal resurgence in which the subject has become the expression of a specificity, of a
singularity. One observes a tribality and a singularity conjoined, in a way, For
myself, I am inclined to think that such tendencies are not residual, but represent
an elaboration upon or around vestigial elements which may well be alive, which
function as the scattered fragments of a totality, a globality capable, in spite of
everything, to organize the world and the subject as the convener of that world.
This subject had created a form of ,philosophy, of the “becoming-subject”
of the
world. We do not need to invoke I-Iegel here, but all the same, his texts signalled a
certain power, specifically a conceptual power, and as everyone knows it does not
exist today. My view is that what you are describing today is a form of reparation,
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that we all are involved in such reparations today, in the S.O.S. subject, or in the
S.O.S. subjectivity [The term S.0.S has recently been used in the context of social
and political activism, e.g., S.O.S. Racisme, an organisation founded by Harlem
Desir concerned with combatting racism against non-European
immigrants has
mobilized considerable attention -transl]. Such a subject, moreover, does not appear
to be a divided one, a really alienated one drawing all of its energies from its
alienation, but, rather a reconstituted one, a re-synthesized one within which you
cannot discern this pull, this divisiveness with all the consequences they entail upon
symbolic and imaginary levels. Such a subject is the standard figure, robot of a
reconstituted subject trying to recoup its residual vestiges, or whatever is left of
them. It could be an ecological subject, and then one would witness the ecology of
the subject, the saving of the subject, since it is qtiite evident that it has been
threatened by a very simple evidence and symptom: the disappearance of its object.
If it did not die purely and simply, this subject as well as that which it pretended to
objectify, to master, now presently escapes it just as its position of power, of mastery,
escapes it too. That subject is not even supposed to know, to be able to believe in
anything, it cannot even believe in itself. And among those who reactivate this
subject, who turn it into an actor, even those people know that it has lost its
integrity as a subject, its conviction to adhere to its own effort to change the world.
It does not believe in it anymore; it pretends to, it is a form of strategy, a posthumous strategy. That subject is a survivor and one witnesses the survival of the
subject or the revival of the subject. Of course it is all about subjectivity, as it is in
the interest of all those disciplines right now, sociology, psychology, philosophy to
save their subject. Then it might be the case that, given the disappearance of this
active subject and its passive counterpart, one presently witnesses the effects of a
subject which attempts to reconstitute around itself the elements of a willpower, of
a vision of the world. I really do not believe this. But this being said, there might be
an effect of re-innovation,
of renovation after a long period of philosophical,
or
maybe structuralist destructuring of the subject. It is not mine, but that does not
matter. It may also be possible ihat we are observing a pendulum effect, the weighing scales tilting one way since in the history of ideas one could witness an internal
phenomenon,
a reactional one, vis&vis the history of the world. Because in fact it
appears that the subject is only a vanishing point at the moment, to such an extent
that it may have reached its fading point and what you are describing may only be a
resurgence in the philosophical
world. I certainly do not look upon it as a credible
phenomenon,
not for myself in any case.
Baya~aWzight:
Sometime in France, after the socialist victory of 1980, I noticed a
very healthy reaction on your part, on that of Lyotard as well (The Intellectual?
Grave), when you both stressed that intellectuals should not speak in anyone’s
name, except in their own. But such were the times in the early eighties when the
Left finally had access to power there. It is also clear that you did express such
discomfort in your interview with Shevtsova (Gane, 79). Nevertheless, some
fourteen years later, British and American intellectuals such as Tony Judt and Susan
Sontag have enunciated interesting reminders to French intellectuals. They have
done so without any moralizing intent, but firmly. Since you were mentioned let us
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talk about the latter. Sontag, in particular, enunciated discomfort about the French
intelligentsia,
on the line of fire if you wish, in Sarajevo where she produced the
first act of Waitingfor Go&. This otherness which she invoked was a humble,
physical choice, a presence which did not force itself, did not operate in a grandiloquent manner, rt la Glucksmann so to speak (he descended upon the burning city
for a few hours, just to explain while quoting you, that wars are made, won, or lost
on TV). Sontag, with her defiance, is determined to return to that city, to produce
this play with actors who want to live, to survive, to play, even if they occasionally
need to lie down on the floor as they are too tired, too hungry or too ragged.
“Because I want to finish that play, il had to be there with them” says she. In 1993,
it probably is a desperate choice, a form of refusal against the worn-out pragmatism
of Vance and Owen, an act deprived of any illusions about our collective cowardice
and yet essential to remind a blind Europe it should minimally come out of its
anomie if it wants Bosnia to survive.
The questions I would like to ask you are the following: first, the realist
abjection you were mentioning
in The IL&on of the End, rather than an insistence
upon actual interventions,
may well be the acceptance of an inevitability
which does
not cost us anything and leaves us prostrated as couch potatoes in front of our
screens. Then if people such as Sontag were not doing what they’re doing, who
would do it? How do you define the role of individuals, be it water-engineers,
intellectuals, pall-bearers, writers or surgeons in those micro-spaces which presently
constellate our planet?
Baudrilkzrd: I would like to agree with you. I would love it if there were the simple
possibility to finish off this pain. Because if, when one does what Sontag does, it is
with no illusion whatsoever, beyond any objective, independent
from any goal, any
result, to save, to save what? Whatever it is, a form of conscience, pride, a sort of: “I
do it in spite of everything,” then I can see that. And it is a heroic act, in the sense
that heroism has always been without illusions. Real heroes are always in that sense
tragic. They do not exactly foresee the result of their actions. But that is the same
thing, one cannot be heroic alone. In that sense I am almost collectivistic. To me,
an act does not have meaning by itself, except in an absurd context. Maybe suicide
does, maybe in fact what we are looking at here is a form of suicide. I am not sure.
But for a choice such as Sontag’s to be meaningful, even if it is without illusion, it
has to have repercussions upon other consciences, and especially within the conscience of those to whom it is destined, such as the people from Bosnia, or the
others.
And this is where the clockwork breaks down, because the absorption of all
this, by the resonance of the sounding board on which it falls, as it is completely
perturbed, falsified, mediatised, this anticipated absorption, through the precession
of whatever you do, that is what distresses me. I understand one doing it anyway, to
save one’s own illusions, the illusion of one’s will. But is it meaningful to do it? If
there is no intellectual world operating as a sounding board, one which would be in
solidarity with such an act and which would be capable of extracting a meaning
from it, why do it? If one cannot create repercussions, reverberations for such an
act, to bring it back within history, so that it was an event, then there is no point in
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doing it. In that sense I would be extremely, not opportunistic,
but realistic, it is
realpolitik I would invoke and suggest that if one does this, chooses to do this, it
has to be an event. Not that it should be important, but it should create a rupture
within the information
continuum.
Did it, or did it not, create a rupture? Everything hinges upon this. Otherwise it is hard to assess it as a rupture. Of course, one
may entertain the idea that if everyone does one’s bit, all of this will produce a
primitive accumulation
of courage, actions and will ultimately produce an event.
But today I do not believe it. Now we are, as Paul Virilio has put it, living in real
time, and real time means fatality. Actions have no antecedent, even when they refer
to other revolutionary
periods, they do not have any finality, even in a long term
context, as no one knows where this is coming from and it all happens within real
time. And such a real time manages to set it all up in a state of total ephemerality.
Susan Sontag’s act is limited. It cannot operate incognito, it is automatically
mediatised, that is for sure. This in itself does not represent a radical objection, but
it points out a tendency. Information
is not what it used to be a long time ago. In
the past, something would take place, then one would know it had taken place,
then others would hear about it. Now, one knows everything before it has even
taken place, and incidentally, it does not even have the time to take place.
Mediatisation
is a precession, you could call it the precession of simulacra within
time. One is in a world where, in order to respond to a reality, to the importance of
things, one needs to be far ahead, in an extreme way, one would need to precede the
precession itself, to anticipate those simulacra, otherwise the clockwork, the system
will be present before we are there. The simulacra will be ahead of us everywhere.
This was the situation of the Prague student and his double. His double was
always there before him. Whenever he would go and meet someone for a duel for
instance, the other had come before him, his adversary had been killed. So there
was no reason for him to exist. We now live in such a system. Can one move
forward? In a global situation, one is held hostage, complicitous even with such a
situation. Such is the effect of the Stockholm syndrome: within such events, victims
and executioners become in some way complicitous.
It is monstrous, but real.
Between the hostage and hostage-takers a form of complicity establishes itself.
In order to be able to have a bearing upon that immediate event, which is
already devoid of its meaning, one would need to be far ahead of the game, in a
state of extraordinary
anticipation.
One can try to do so, through one’s intellect, or
one’s writing, although today it is remarkably harder to do so in practical terms.
Sontag’s gesture, and this is not a value judgment, or a judgment on her courage,
because there was a real virtue in doing what she did, but virtues are something else.
Strategically, if one uses that word, then there I would be more cynical. There is
division of labour that should be respected. Even if there are any intellectuals left and I am not sure I am one of them, even if I appear to share in such a life, appear
‘to share a specific discourse - I do not share in that complicity of intellectuals who
perceive themselves as responsible for something, as privileged with a sort of
conscience-radicalness
that used to be the privilege of intellectuals and now has
moved on to another space. Subjects such as Susan Sontag cannot intervene
anymore, even symbolically, but once again this is not a prognosis or diagnosis.
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Bayard/Knight: Would it be possible to say that the hyperreal is a state where there is
too much reality and not enough ideology? Have we become ideological paupers?
Not in the sense that we still believe in it, in fact rather the opposite, in the sense
that it used to be our alibi, our excuse on the terrain of subjective irony, iomething
in fact in which not to believe. Interestingly, it has even become difficult to be
cynical these days!
Baudrikd: Yes,it is true, since in every respect nobody believes in it any longer.
And there lies the problem, when nobody believes in it any more. And not only in
relation to ideology, but to indifference as well. Indifference was a fantastic quality,
something Almost stoical. It was very good to be indifferent in a world which was
not, where there were differences, conflicts. So this kind of indifference, of a
strategy of indifference, created a privileged situation. But in a world that has
become completely indifferent what would it serve? It would be necessary to
become different again in order to differentiate oneself from a world which has,
objectively, become indifferent. That history is very pernicious.
It is the same thing for art with its power of illusion. What does this become
in a world which itself ends up being totally illusory, even random? It becomes very
difficult to find a form of intervention
like that, So ideology.. . yes, the world is
now so totally ideologized where everything passes through the narrative of ideology
that it no longer serves any purpose to have any. Out of that follows the situation,
the transcendence if you like, of ideology which actually, in fact, no longer exists.
I had an experience with simulation and the simulacrum. Nowadays I have
had enough of it - 20 years of it, or almost, is enough! Something interesting
happened to me recently on this subjiect, in relation to Japan. There was an erudite
Japanese man who had come to interview me, and I asked him why for a number of
years he had been translating my books - I had not received any word of it. I had
been translated there several times be:fore, and I had been told at that time ‘Ah,
simulation and the simulacrum! In Japan you are an important spokesman.” So I
asked him why I no longer heard about readers’ reactions and he told me, “But it is
very simple, very simple you know. Simulation and the simulacrum have been
realized. You were quite right: the world h& become yours.. . and so we no longer
have any need of you: You have disappiared. You have been volatilized in reality, or
in the realization of hyperreality. It is over. In terms of theory, we no longer need
you, and there is no longer a need to defend your theories.” That is the paradox of
utopia made real; it clearly makes every utopian dimension perfectly useless.
So I do not know if that answefrs your question, but ideology seems to me
now to be so old a word that in some respects I do not even like tb talk about it. In
short, if it were true what Marx said, that it is the effect of a reaction of the superstructure on the infrastructure,
a mode that reflects the conflictual relation of
superstructure and infrastructure..
. but clearly one can no longer give it a fundamental interpretation
today except to produce a referential discourse which itself no
longer has the effect of a real clash in the reality of the infrastructure,
but is the
legacy of a conceptual discourse that is already archaic/ancient.
It becomes a kind of
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ideological zombie of itself, an artefact of itself. But then, without knowing it
because everybody eventually takes up the language of ideology, everybody ideologizes things, it becomes our anchor.
As for me, I believe deeply that no one truly believes in it any longer at all.
But it will always be there, and that is still the role, unfortunately,
of the intellectual
class, the political-intellectual
class, which maintains the fiction of ideological
discourse. Everyone pretends all the same to consume it since otherwise there would
be panic. But at a profound level all this has no more credibility, This is what makes
everything suddenly collapse, some day or other. It is a collapse that takes place
because for a long time there has no longer been any credible basis to the thing at
all. We have always wondered why, in the East, everything happened so fast
without, apparently, any possible foreshadowing
of the collapse. Well, it is simply
that everything had been completely devitalized for a long time, and the discourse
was no longer anything more than a parody of itself Eventually, a reality that is
only a parody of itself will cave in without resistance. There is not even any need to
give it a push. Moreover, this new type of event is interesting, arising effectively out
of indifference and no longer out of a will to action but out of a long inertia which
has sapped the system. And then sooner or later, it implodes.
BayaruXnight:
Given the allusions to the Manichean nature of your strategy, irony
is a rather isolated term here. It functions well with parody, but the latter hardly
appears m your texts. Why not? Is it because the contradiction
between them is
already contained within irony?
Baudrilkwd: You say parody does not appear very much? Though I like the term
well enough, parody is still perhaps a little too theatrical, too specular, in spite of
everything. The parodic still has a certain power. It is true that I use the term irony
a lot more, and what is more, I do not use it in the subjective sense any more. It is
no longer subjective or romantic irony, nor humour in that sense. Rather it is a
form of irony that is pataphysical, but objective. Before, it was subjective irony. It
was to some extent connected to critique, to a critical, romantic, negative point of
view, to a form of disillusion. The new irony seems to me rather to be’an excess of
positivity, of reality. And that is why I call it pataphysical because pataphysics,
Alfred’Jarry’s Ubu, is precisely that. It is the too full, the too much of itself, it is an
absolute, total over-awareness, positivity without fault. Ubu’s big gut will clearly
explode one day. And that is metaphysical irony, the irony of our world, and it is
related to a kind of protuberance and excrescence of the system. It is no longer
ridiculous in the classic theatrical sense, it is pataphysical. Ubu swallowed his own
superego.
Everything is at the same time untouchable and non-existent, and that is the irony
of non-existence, of insignificance. It is more radical than the Other. The Other was
still, and that, moreover, is what gave it beauty and charm, complicity in the object,
whereas irony now pertains to events themselves. The events in the East, where all
of a sudden, at a time when one could have believed in the fall of capital, we
witness the fall of communism.
And that seems to be an ironic event to me,
perfectly unforeseeable, and nevertheless dependent on a fantastic logic. It is that
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irony, rather, that I would insist on now. But it is difficult to thematize because it
no longer lends itself to laughter, nor even to a smile really! Perhaps there is an
object somewhere that smiles, but we do not know it.
Buyard/Knight:
There are times when you almost speak as an Albigiensis.
Baudrilkzrd: An Albigiensis,
parency ofEviL.
yes a Manichean.
Certainly
Manichean
in The Tram-
Bayard/Knight:
There is a paradox which captures my attention in all this. On the
one hand I hear a certain Albigiensia.nism,
which sooner or later is read as a form of
prophetic interpretation,
it could be Jeremiah in the Old Testament, or even Job on
his garbage heap, in other occasions you almost sound as Ecclesiastes. The paradox,
for me, hinges around the fact that while I know you feel a perfect repulsion for
moralistic rigorism, is it possible to behave as a prophet, especially as accurately as
you have sometimes turned out to do, without being also a rigorous moralist?
Baudrillard~ Rigorous. . . yes, to an extent that is a quality, although rigourism is a
flaw, rigour, an extreme rigour is a strength. I would be in favour of extreme rigour.
Radicalism is also a form of rigour as well. A rigourous logic seems to be necessary.
Pity, mercy towards reality are not exactly my choice. I would rather go in the
opposite direction. And, in a way, that is true, this could be perceived as a prophetic
moralism. Prophetic.. . well, I am not sure, I guess one can extrapolate. I, in a way,
love to extrapolate, take an idea to its utmost limit, to its extreme. Is this being
prophetic? Sometimes, it happens to be right, but not necessarily. I do remember
that someone had tried to make a inventory of all the inane comments I had made,
well maybe not inane, but at least illusory and they had found quite a few. It was a
newspaper which had done this, I think it was the Globe-Hebh,
or some such
publication.
In a way, it provided me with some publicity for things which had
indeed taken place. But I had not uttered those prophecies out of a moralistic sense,
although I am not sure whether I am devoid of it, I might have inherited some
from my ancestors, who were peasants. So that my rigour would be of such a kind.
It might come from i sense of repulsion, rather than moralism. Indeed I may be
moral in the sense that everything I describe, I do from a sort of distance, cynicism,
objectivity, from a paradoxical stance also. I do entertain deep repulsions, simultaneously with some attractions. Of course morals are being sustained by resentments
and repulsions. And I must confess that I do feel an objective repulsion towards a
number of things. In order to describe something you need to be nasty, to be
propelled by the energy of repulsion. The Beaubourg qrchitecture, the Beaubourg
aesthetics aroused that in me and I described them with a degree of loathsomeness.
But ultimately, when one ends up giving the object its monstrous dimension, its
scale, or scope strikes you. And in order to find them or to express them, you need
to absorb this object and identify with it as well as reject it, violently even. Writing
also comes from that locus. It is an acting-out, as we were saying yesterday. Morals
also reprove, reject, forbid although I am not certain that the analogy holds the
same primitive reference, that the primitive scene would be the same.
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Bayard/Knight:
If you had to describe yourself, today, in a quick shot, would you
describe yourself as The Accidental Tourist of the end of this century: little luggage,
few illusions and gifted with that psychic stoicism the end of a millennium
leaves us
with at dawn?
Baudrilhd:
Tourist.. . well that is not very positive. I guess a form of speculation, a
capacity for crossing, traversing yes. A tourist goes through, demonstrates a certain
transversality, no doubt, goes to the end of things, or around them. If going around
an object or looking at it from multiple viewpoints, defines the tourist, yes that is
true. But there is also the fact that tourists avoid, let off, abandon a number of
belongings and I did strive to do that. Why? because I probably was the happy
owner of valuable gear and I tried to get rid of it. I tried not to refer to all of the
history of ideas, philosophy even, to all of that richness I admired the most.
Somewhere they are still close to me, but I did try not to make references to them, I
chose to forsake them, to abandon objects, that is true. Did I try to create a power
vacuum? I do not know whether the term tourist has that meaning, but it invokes a
comparable mobility, the absence of primitive, or secondary accumulations, that is
me. I tried to avoid accumulations,
rather than lean towards expanding. I am not a
gambler, not a spendthrift, but one needs to be able to sacrifice in order to re-create
a vacuum, and not the other way around, that is clear.
Bayar~Knight:
I was thinking about The Accidental Tourist, when asking you this
question, as in Cool Memories you delineate beautiful meanders around the subject
of exile, which you describe as a wonderful and comfortable structure, marked by
unreality and the end of the world. Have you been looking for those as fragments to
be reached outside of a France filled with greyness and chagrined undecisiveness?
Baudrikd:
Exile, yes of course. I am quite aware that I operate from a prejudiced
position against nationalism, from one which is anti-nationalist,
or even anticultural. Somewhere within me there is a distancing away from what is closer to the
bone, for that which is closer to one’s own culture, one’s country, family is that from
which one cannot escape. Such a promiscuousness I perceive as dangerous and
therefore I have always tried to distance myself from it, sometimes with some
partiality about what is the closest to me. And yet, I do value intimacy, roots,
ancestry. It is’maybe because I have those roots within me that I can afford to
become the perfect cosmopolitan since I know I will always have that form, that
substance which solidity confers upon oneself and that I will never lose those
elements. Therefore I never look upon the world as a,lost object and I can afford to
loose sight of it, especially that which is closer to me, territory or country. That is
true as far as France is concerned, where I have always had an anti-cultural
prejudice, clearly I have never forgiven culture, it contains too many unacceptable
elements and the world becomes increasingly unacceptable because it “culturalizes”
itself at full-speed. Everything has now turned into culture and it has even become
very difficult to go beyond one’s own culture since one finds it everywhere. There
will even be a moment when one will not be able to find any deserts. Deserts are a
metaphor for disappearing objects, evanescence beyond culture. Now that they have
become increasingly culturalized they are virtually impossible to find.
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Patagonia has become a new frontier, absence as much as the locus of
absence, have become extremely difficult to access. The real danger, that is true, is
to end up wallowing in an obsessional negativity vis-a-vis the others’ culture and the
rest of the world. And it is true that I have developed my own biased distance, but I
think it is better that way, rather than the other way around.
BayaruYKnight: In the interviews you have given, from Paris to Australia via California, you often speak of the cinema, of the plastic arts, architecture, painting. What
place do the other four senses occupy in your life - taste, smell, touch, hearing?
Baudrillarci Ah, we have almost come back to the opening question! How shall I
put it? I have not had any musical culture, or acculturation
to music, practically
none. These are things which later on, in adulthood, you definitely miss. As for
painting, the situation was a little bit autodidactic, but ultimately there I know
where this is all coming from. Cinema much more because I really was a bit of a
cinema fan at a certain point in my life, while I am much less so today because I no
longer happen to find myself there and no longer see what it is any more, that is
true. And then lastly architecture? Yes, that much more so because of friends in
architecture, because of a milieu I knew well, though not through any initial
intervention
on my part. And so, then, I have finished up with photography
which
was and still is exactly a register which is completely intimate and profound for me.
Not a profoundness of substance, but perhaps on the surface, though very intense
all the same. I have not practised it for very long, perhaps a dozen years, which
makes photography
as intense for me as writing, though in a completely different
way. Yet perhaps it has given me pleasures even more intense than writing.
Is it a relationship with an image, and can you call it an image? It is perhaps
for me something else. It is more magical than the real thing. It is the object that,
right from the start, has deeply intrigued and obsessed me. I began with the object,
after that perhaps the Object with a capital letter, or even the metaphysical object
which can be anything one wishes, then perhaps the object as radical otherness, like
radical exoticism. For me, the photographic
image is a little bit like that, and that is
different from cinema. I am not the only one to think that the photographic
image
is superior to the cinematic image because cinema, in relation to photography,
is a
loss in terms of illusion, the power of illusion. Of course, it is a progression, an
objective one if you like, but like all progress it can very well be precisely, objectively, a loss. Cinema itself, right inside its practice, has lost the force of illusion. It
has lost it through colour, by all the improvements that have been made which
have, in fact, always seems highly problematic to me. So the photographic
image
restores a sort of absolute moment. What Barthes says about it is very nice, though
perhaps too nice. I have not really thought about it. It is a raw element, evidently,
and I try to keep it that way, harsh, and to practise it harshly, a dimension I
recognize quite willingly. For the other senses, even art and painting, I have never
been involved in them except at a remove, and rather episodically. I have never
really addressed things from that point of view, although sometimes I have found
myself involved in these spaces in spite of myself, with New York artists and the
simulationists. And that was an extremely ambiguous adventure. I found myself
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taken in there like a referent, a referential hostage. I was badly treated. One minute
I found myself praised to the skies, and then cut down maliciously. Fine, none of
that was my doing. It was an unwitting destiny.
Choice, desire, investments, these would be in the area of the image, effectively, in the domain of the image, and more precisely in that of photography. I
cannot really explain why; it is where I have found a sort of, not of alternative but
of a total alternation with writing. Not to have anything but writing makes you
really an intellectual, even if you do not like it all the same. Writing is, nonetheless,
related more to discourse while photography can be done with a total singularity
that is external, alien. Of course there is still a danger there that people end up
identifying you as a photographer
anyway, and then you find yourself co-opted
once again. But for the moment, things are still O.K.!
This interview
wax conducted
in French and
translated
into English by Professors Caroline Bayard
and Graham Knight.
63
Civil Society, Fanaticism,
and Digital Reality
An Interview with Slavoj Zizek
Geert Lovink
Gem Lovink: Let’s speak about the role of intellectuals. Before 1989, there was a
strange relationship among intellectuals and those in power in Eastern Europe.
Both bureaucrats and dissidents had some sort of relationship with politics. E&n
now, this is partly the case. In Western Europe this phenomenon
disappeared and it
is hard to see any relationship or even dialogue. What should be the role of intellectuals?
Skzvoj Zizek: Partially this is true. For me what was partially so attractive, so
sympathetic about real socialism, despite being a corrupt, cynical system, was the
belief in the power of the spoken word. Some twenty years ago, I was editor of a
small art-theoretical
journal with a ci.rculation of 3,400. Once we published a small,
obscure poem, incomprehensibly
modern, but between the lines there was a
dissident message. If the power would have ignored the poem, nothing would have
happened. But there was an extraordinary session of the Central Committee. Okay,
this is repression, but what I like about it is chat the communist power took the
potential, detonating force of the spoken word very seriously. They were always
interested in arguing with intellectuals. Let’s take an artist like Tarkovski, who was
half dissident. He was half allowed to work, even if they suppressed some of his
films. They were impressed, they bothered. Fredric Jameson made a nice point
about this: we are only now becoming aware that what we liked about EastEuropean dissidents like Have1 is only possible within a socialist system.
Our influence, beginning in the mid-eighties, was at that time incredibly
large, especially the philosophers, soc:iologists, literary theoreticians. But this was a
very limited conjunction.
Now there is the pure ignorance of the regime, which is
simply not interested in ideological questions. I feel sorry for those countries in
which writers nowadays play an imp&ant
role. Take Serbia, where this nationalist
madness was fabricated by writers. Even in Slovenia it’s the same with the nationalist writers, although they do not have much influence.
Lovink: But you are involved in politics yourself, up until this moment. There are a
lot of controversies in Ljubljiana about your involvement in the governing party
and the fact that you write speeches for them.
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Z&k: There is a messianic complex with intellectuals in Eastern Europe. Nothing
against it, but it becomes extremely dangerous in Slovenia when this messianic
vision of intellectuals is combined with a vulgar anti-Americanism,
which is a very
popular political attitude of right wingers. America for them means no national
solidarity, filthy liberalism, multi-culturalism,
individualism,
the market. They are
afraid of a pluralistic democracy and there is a proto-fascistic potential in it. This
combination
of nationalist writers, whose obsession is how to retain national
identity, and an anti-capitalist right-wing movement is very dangerous.
I did something for which I lost almost all my friends, what no good leftist
ever does: I fully supported the ruling party in Slovenia. For this all my leftist
friends hate me and of course the whole right wing. What the liberal democratic
party did was a miracle. Five years ago we were the remainder of the new social
movements, like feminist and ecological groups. At that time everybody thought
that we would be vanishing mediators. We made some slyly corrupted, but good
moves and now we are the strongest party. I think it was our party that saved
Slovenia from the fate of the other former Yugoslav republics, where they have the
one-party model. Either right wing like in Croatia or left wing like in Serbia, which
hegemonised in the name of the national interest. With us it’s a really diverse,
pluralist scene, open towards foreigners (of course, there are some critical cases). But
the changes of a genuine pluralist society are not yet lost.
It’s typical that this position triggers an enormous hatred against me. Slovene
media absolutely ignore me, there is never an article about me. On the other hand,
if some nationalist poet publishes a small poem in some obscure Austrian journal,
it’s a big success in Slovenia. I am rather perceived as some dark, ominous, plotting,
political manipulator,
a role I enjoy immensely and like very much.
Lovink: You have not become cynical about the current power struggles you are
involved in?
Z&X+: You do not hear me not saying that it is so disgusting. It’s a simple, professional choice. Now politics is becoming business-as-usual in Slovenia. It’s no longer
that once a week you write a heroic article and you are a hero. It means intrigues
and meetings. I simply had to choose. Do I do serious theory or politics? What I
hate most are the beautiful souls of the left wing who complain about their losses,
that everything is corrupted, where are the good old days of the original, left-wing
dissidence? No, you must accept the rules of the game. Svetlana Slapzak [from
Belgrade, now Ljubljana - GL] and the group around her present themselves as
marginalised victims. But her groups control two departments and the most
powerful publishing house. They get the most money from the ministry of science.
And via the Soros Foundation they are selling the story of being surrounded by
nationalism.
Let’s take me. I was blocked from the university before; I was only teaching
abroad, in France and in America. I never taught at any university in Slovenia, I am
absolutely alone, without any research assistant. They just give me enough money
in order to survive. My answer to Svetlana Slapzak would be: why did she become a
Slovenian citizen? Her very position is a contradiction
of what she says. In a state of
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less than 2 million we offered 100,000 non-Slovenians
permanent citizenship,
against terrible nationalistic resistance. There were no dirty tricks involved, like a
test if you knew Slovenian. We are still in an intermediate stage. When.a new
political logic imposes itself, the Sittlichkeit, the unwritten rules are still unsure,
people are still searching for a model. The question is: will we become just another
small, stupid, nationalistic state or maintain this elementary, pluralistic opening?
And all compromises are worth it for this goal.
Lovink: What is your view on the work of the Soros Foundation
an “open society”?
and the concept of
Z&k: If you look into my heart, you’ll see I am an old-fashioned
left winger. In the
short term I support it, but I don’t have Popper notions about it. Soros is doing
good work in the field of education, refugees and keeping the theoretical and social
sciences’ spirit alive. These countries are not only impoverished,
but the sphere of
social sciences is hegemonised by Heideggerian
nationalists. But the Soros people
have this ethic of the bad state vs. good, civic, independent
structures. But sorry, in
Slovenia I am for the state and against civil society! In Slovenia, civil society is equal
to the right wingers. In America, after the Oklahoma bombing, they suddenly
discovered that madmen are everywhere. Civil society is not this nice, social
movement, but a network of moral majority, conservative and nationalist pressure
groups, against abortion, religious education in schools. A real pressure from below.
For me the open society means something very practical: the unwritten rules
of the ‘political space. For example, if you oppose the present government or the
hegemonic party, are you then still accepted or is there an unwritten, unspoken
stigma that you are a half-nationalist
traitor and so on? Up to what extent can you
make a career without making political compromises? I don’t have any fundamental
hopes in a socialist revolution or whatever. We have several big crises coming: the
ecological, the developed against the underdeveloped
world and the loss of the sense
of reality in the face of all the rapid changes. I don’t underestimate the social impact
of the loss of stability. Is the frame of liberal capitalism able to solve this antagonism? Unfortunately
my answer is no. Here I am the old-fashioned
left-wing
pessimist. I think that ghettoisation, like half of L.A., is far stronger than the
Marxist class struggle. At least both workers and capitalists still participated in
legality and the state, whereas liberal capitalism simply doesn’t integrate the new
ghettoes. Liberal democracy has no answer to these problems.
A lot of times, this Soros approach of openness indulges in its own species of
covered racism. Recently at a conference in Amsterdam, Press Now asked whether it
was possible to.find a universal language so that intellectuals from various parts of
the former Yugoslavia could start a dialogue. I find this cliche extremely dangerous,
because it comes from an idea of the Balkans as the phantasmatic space of nationalistic madness. This phantasy is very ,well manipulated
and expressed in some
popular works of art, like Kusturica’s film Underground. He said himself, in Cahiers
du cinPma, that in the Balkans, war is a nat&l
phenomenon,
noboily knows when
it will emerge, it just comes, it’s in our genes. This naturalisation
of the Balkans into
an apolitical, primordial
theatre of passions is cliche and I find it very suspicious. I
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would like to quote Hegel here: “The true evil is an attitude which perceives evil
everywhere.” I am very suspicious about this apparent multi-cultural,
neutral,
liberal attitude, which only sees nationalistic madness around itself, It posits itself in
a witness role. The post-Yugoslav war is strictly the result of European cultural
dynamics. We don’t need this simplistic liberal deploring of “why don’t people speak
to each other?” Nobody is doing power analysis.
A common western cliche is the so-called complexity of the Balkans. This
specifically allows the west to maintain its position as an excluded observer. What
you should do is what I call a phenomenological
rkduction ri l’envers. You should not
try to understand it. Like TV the funny effect when you disconnect the voice, you
only have these stupid gestures. Cut off the meaning and then you’ll get the pure
power battle. The Balkans are a symptom of Europe in the sense that it embodies all
that is wrong in the light of the utopian notion of the European Community
itself.
What is the dream? A kind of neutral, purely technocratic Brussels bureaucracy.
They project their mirror image on the Balkans. What they both have in common
is the exclusion of the proper political antagonisms,
Louink: The campaign in Holland, Press Now, supports so-called independent
media in the former Yugoslavia. One of its premises is the idea that the war started
with propaganda from above through state-controlled
media. Seeing that any
western intervention
already came too late, it states that, for example, through
independent
media, one could work on a long term solution. Do you agree with
this analysis?
Zizek: Up to a point I agree with this, but I have always been in favour of military
intervention
from the west. Around 1992, with a little bit of pressure, the war
would have been over. But they missed the moment. Now, with the shift of balance
and the stronger Russia, this is no longer possible. At that time, Croatians and
Slovenians were in favour of independence, and the Bosnians were much more
ambiguous and they are paying the price for it. The Bosnians didn’t want to prepare
for war, they were slower, more careful and that’s why they are now so mad at the
west. There was no protection of Bosnia for the Yugoslav army, despite all the
guarantees. And then, after the attack, the west suddenly started talking about
ethnic struggles, all sides must be guilty, and primordial
passions.
I don’t cry too much for Yugoslavia. The moment Milosevic took over and
annexed Kosovo and Vojvodina, the balance of power shifted. There was the choice
between a more federal Yugoslavia and a new, centralist one. Do not overestimate
the role of the media in the late eighties. Media were allowed to play this role in
order for local communist bureaucracies to survive. The key to the Yugoslav crisis is
Milosevic’s strategy to maintain the power of the old nomenclatura by raking up
this national question. The media did their dirty work. It was horrible to watch day
by day the stories in Slovenia about Serbs raping us and in Serbia about Albanians
raping them. All the news was filtered through this poisoning hatred, from everyday
crime to economics. But that was not the origin of the conflict. That was the
calculation from the power elite to maintain power.
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If you define independence in terms of not being supported or controlled by
the state, then the worst right wing weekly is a independent
medium and should be
supported by Soros. I do admit that in Serbia and Croatia there is absolute control
over the media. What they allow are really small, marginalised media. Impartial,
independent
information
can help a lot, but don’t expect too much of it.
Lovink: In your speech during the Ars Electronica conference, you emphasised the
fact that after a phase of introduction,
the seduction of the new media will be over
and so will “virtual sex.” So the desire to be wired will be over soon?
Zizek: The so-called “virtual
communities”
are not such a great revolution as it
might appear. What impresses me is the extent to which these virtual phenomena
retroactively enable us to discover to what extent our self has always been virtual.
Even the most physical self experience has a symbolic, virtual element in it. For
example playing sex games. What fascinates me is that the possibility of satisfaction
already counts as an actual satisfaction. A lot of my friends used to play sex games
on Minitel in France. They told me that the point is not really to meet a person,
not even to masturbate, but that just typing your phantasies is the fascination itself.
In the symbolic order the potentiality
already gives actual satisfaction. In psychoanalytic theory the notion of symbolic castration is often misunderstood.
The threat
of castration as to its effects, acts as a castration. Or in power relations, where the
potential authority forms the actual threat. Take Margaret Thatcher. Her point was
that if you don’t rely on state support but on your individual resources, luck is
around the corner. The majority didn’t believe this, they knew very well that most
of them would remain poor. But it was enough to be in a position where they
might succeed.
The idea that you were able to do something, but didn’t, gives you more
satisfaction than actually doing it. In Italy, it is said to be very popular during the
sexual act that a woman tells a man some dirty phantasies. It is not enough that you
are actually doing it; you need some’phantasmatic,
virtual support. “You are good,
but yesterday I fucked another one and he was better.. .” What interests me are the
so-called sado-masochistic,
ritualised, sexual practices. You never go to the end, you
just repeat a certain foreplay. Virtuall in the sense that you announce it, but never do
it. Some write a contract. Even when you are doing it, you never lose control, all
the time you behave as the director of your own game. What fascinates me is this
Spahung, this gap in order to remain a certain distance. This distance, far from
spoiling enjoyment, makes it even more intense. Here I see great possibilities for the
VR stuff.
In the computer I see virtuality, in the sense of symbolic fiction, collapsing.
This notion has a long tradition. In. Bentham’s Panopticon we find virtuality at its
purest. You never know if somebody is there in the centre. If you knew someone
was there, it would have been less horrifying.
Now’s it’s just an “utterly dark spot,”
as Bentham calls it. If someone is following you and you’re not sure, it is more
horrible than if you know that there is somebody, A radical uncertainty.
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Lovink: You are famous for your film analyses. But can you imagine also using
examples from computer networks, analyzing the storyline of a CD-ROM
or use
television material?
Z&k: The British Film Institute proposed to me to choose my own six, seven films
and to do a couple of lectures there, since I use so many film examples. They came
up with the idea to do a CD-ROM,
because I write in the-same manner: click here,
go there, use this fragment, that story or scene. My books are already failed CDROMs, as someone told me. But because of copyright, it is extremely difficult to
realise and dirty capitalism will destroy this plan. Don’t they realise that if you use
an excerpt of theirs, you create propaganda for them? But it is my dream to do
something like this. In my favorite book, Tarrying with the Negative, I use some
fragments of Hitchcock. How nice it would be to have it included in the text. But
concerning film, I am indeed rather conservative. At this moment I am working on
the theme of the role of music in cinema. The idea is that in the mid-thirties,
when
the classical Hollywood
code was established, it was strictly Wagnerian, pure
accompanying
music, radical underscoring, determining your subjective perspective. It’s a classical case of a conservative revolution. As Wagner said about his
Gesamthmtwerk:
“if we allow music to develop by itself, it will become atonal and
inimitable.”
What I also study are the soundtracks in the films of Lynch and Altman and
the shift from the landscape to the soundscape. With Altman and Dolby stereo, you
no longer need the soundtrack as a general frame, as if you have inconsistent
fragments. The unity is no longer established at the visual level. I want to connect
this with Altman’s Short Cuts, with its series of faiths, contingently
hitting each
other. Very Deleuzean: global nonsense where contingent encounters produce local
effects of sense in order to understand what subjective in our late capitalist society
means. Or let’s take Lynch’s biggest failure, Dune. Did you notice the use of
multiple inner monologues? Reality is something very fragile for Lynch. If you get
too close to it you discover Leni, Riefenstahl. I am not interested in direct content
analysis, but the kind of purely formal changes in how we relate to the physicality
of the film and the shifts in the notions of subjectivity. Of course all of this is done
in a kindly anti-Derridian
swing. For us, it is the sound that is the traumatic point,
the cry or even the song. The point where you lose your unity and the ways the selfenjoying voice always gets controlled. What interests me at the political level is how
the discourse machinery, in order to function, has to rely on the obscene voice.
What appears to be a carnivalesque subversion, this eruption of obscene freedom,
really serves the power. But these are my B-productions,
if you want to put it in
Hollywood
terms. The A-production
of the last two years was a book on Schelling
that I just finished.
Lovink We
current film
approaches?
media, like
recently celebrated the centenary of cinema. What’s the condition of
theory? What will come after the critical, semiological and gender
Is it still useful to see film as a unity or should we surf through the
the users do and use a variety of sources?
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Zizek: Fredric Jameson has already rnade this point. What goes on in cinema is
determined by what happens in other media. Concerning theory, there are a lot of
others, the whole domain of cultural criticism in America is basically cinema theory.
What attracts me, is the axis between gaze and voice and nowhere will you find this
tension better than in cinema. This still is for me the principal axis. Cinema is for
me a kind of condensation. On the one hand you have the problem of voice, on the
other the narrativisation.
The only change I can think of is that up until twenty years ago, going to the
cinema was a totally different social experience. It was a Saturday or Sunday
afternoon, and this changed. But what still appears in ordinary commercial films is
the shift in the notion of subjectivity, You can detect what goes on at the
profoundest,
most radical level of our symbolic identities and how we experience
ourselves. Cinema is still the easiest way. Like for Freud, dreams were the royal way
to the unconscious.
Maybe I am part of a nostalgic movement. Nowadays, because of all these
new media, cinema is in a crisis. It has become popular as a nostalgic medium. And
what is modern film theory really about? Its ultimate objects are nostalgic films
from the thirties and forties. It is as if you need the theory in order to enjoy them.
It’s incredible how even Marxists enjoy this game. They have seen every film, I’m
not joking. It’s not only this paternalising notion that it is good to use examples
from cinema. I would still claim that there is an inherent logic of the theory itself,
as if there is a privileged relationship, like the role literature played in the nineteenth century.
Lovink: You have been to Japan. What’s your opinion
in that country?
on the technological
culture
Zizek: First I must say that I don’t have my own positive theory about Japan. What
I do have, as every western intellectual, are the myths of reference. There is the old,
right wing image of the Samurai code, fighting to death, the absolute, ethical Japan.
Then there is the leftist image, from Eisenstein: the semiotic Japan. The empty
signs, no western metaphysics of presence. It’s a no less phantasmatic Japan than the
first one. We know that Eisenstein for his montage of attractions used Japanese
ideograms.
Then there is Bertolt Brecht as an exception. He took over elements like
sacrifice and authority and put thern in a left-wing context. Here in the west,
Brecht was seen as someone introducing
a fanatic Eastern morality, But now there’s
in Suhrkamp Verkzg a detailed edition of his “Jasager” and his “Lernstacke.” They
discovered that all those moments the western critics perceived as remainders of this
imperial and sacrificing Japan were indeed edited by Brecht. What they perceived as
Japanese was Brecht.
Then there is the capitalist Japan and its different stages. There is the myth of
non-original
Japan taking over, but developing better: Philips for the rich and Sony
for the poor. Twenty years later this was of course the other way round. Then there
is the Kojevian Japan. First, for Kojeve the end of history was Russia and America,
the realisation of the French Revolution. Then he noticed that something was
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missing. He found the answer in Japan, in the little surplus. If everything only
functions, as in America, you would kill yourself. In the snobbism, drinking tea in a
nice way, he found that life still had a meaning.
But there is another Japan, the psycho-analytic.
For the multi-culturalist
approach, the almost standard example is Japan and its way of kneinung,
saying
no. There are thirty ways to say no. You say no to your wife in one way, no to a
child in another way. There is not one negation. There is a small Lacanian volume,
La chosejaponaise. They elaborate the borrowing of other languages, all these
ambiguities. Didn’t Lacan say that Japanese do not have an unconscious?
For the west, Japan is the ambiguous Other: at the same time it fascinates you
and repels you. Let’s not forget the psychological cliche of Japan: you smile, but you
never know if it is sincere or if you are mocking us - the idea of Japan as the
impenetrable Other. This ambiguous politeness. What do they really want? There’s
also the idea of the Japanese as the ersatz Jews for the Americans. The Japanese
governments together with two or three mega companies, plotting. All this spleen,
this palette of phantasies, is Japan for us. But what surprised me is that authors,
whom I considered strictly European, are widely read in Japan, as for example
George Lukacs.
Then there is a Japan, loved by those who criticise our western, decadent way
of liberal democracy and who look for a model that would combine the dynamics
of capitalism, while maintaining
some firm traditional structure of authority. And
again, it can work both ways. What I like about phantasies is that they are always
ambiguous. You can turn it in a negative way, Japanese pretending to play capitalism, while in reality what you have is conspiracy and authority. On the positive side
you see thatthere is a capitalism possible with moral values.
What I liked there, in restaurants and subway stations, is the absence of
English. You don’t have this self-humiliating,
disgusting, pleasing attitude. It’s up to
the foreigners to find their way out. I liked tremendously those automatic vending
machines. Did you see The Shining, based on Stephen King’s novel? This is America
at its worst. Three people, a family, in a big hotel and still the space is too small for
them and they start killing each other. In Japan, even when it is very crowded, you
don’t feel the pressure, even if you ate physically close. The art of ignoring. In the
New York subway, even when it’s half full, you would have this horrifying experience of the absolute proximity of the Other. What I liked about the Foucault
conference in Tokyo I attended was that one would expect the Japanese to apply
Foucault to their own notions. But all the Japanese interventions
were about
Flaubert. They didn’t accept this anthropological
game of playing idiots for you.
No, they tried to beat us at our own game. We know Flaubert better than you.
Every nation in Europe has this fanaticism, conceiving itself as the true,
primordial
nation, The Serbian myth, for example, is that they are the first nation
of the world. The Croatians consider themselves as primordial
Aryans. The
Slovenians are not really Slavs, but pretend to be of Etrurian origin. It would be
nice to find a nation that accepts the fact of being the second and not the first.
This might be a part of the Japanese identity, if you look at the way they borrow
languages.
c
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I recently read a book on Kurosawa. It is said that Rasbomonwas seen in the
early fifties as the big discovery of the Eastern spirit. But in Japan it was perceived as
way too western. My favorite Japanese film is Sancho by Michoguchi
because it
offers itself for a nice, Lacanian reading, the problem of the lost mother, the
mother’s voice reaching the son, etc. This is the Japanese advantage over America
when the mother’s voice tries to reach the son. In America one would get madness,
like Hitchcock’s Z+yc/~o, but in Japan you get a normal family.
The Balkans is now a region where the west is projecting its own phantasies,
like Japan. And again, this can be very contradictory. The film Rising Sun ambiguously suggests that there is a Japanese plot to take over and buy Hollywood.
The
idea is that they do not just want our factories, our land, they even want our
dreams. Behind this there’s the notion of thought control. It’s the old Marxist
notion of buying the whole chain, from the hardware to the movie theatres. What
interests me in Japan is that it is a good argument against the vulgar, pseudoMarxist evolutionary
notion that you have to go through certain evolutionary
stages. Japan proves that you can make a direct short circuit. You retain certain
elements of the old hierarchical superstructure and combine it very nicely with the
most effective version of capitalism it pretends to be. It’s a good experience in nonanthropocentrism.
It’s a mystery for western sociologists who say that you need
Protestant ethics for good capitalism.
What I see in Japan, and maybe this is my own myth, is that behind all these
notions of politeness, snobbism etc. the Japanese are well aware that something
which may appear superficial and unnecessary has a much deeper structural
function. A western approach would be: who needs this? But a totally ridiculous
thing at a deeper level might play a stabilizing function we are not aware of.
Everybody laughs at the English monarchy, but you’ll never know.
There is another notion that is popular now amongst American sociologists;
civilizations of guilt versus civilizations of shame. The Jews and their inner guilt and
the Greeks with their culture of shame. The usual cliche now is that Japan is the
ultimate civilization of shame. What I despise in America is the studio actors logic,
as if there ‘is something good in self expression: do not be oppressed, open yourself,
even if you shout and kick the others, everything in order to express and liberate
yourself. This is a stupid idea, that behind the mask there is some truth. In Japan,
and I hope that this is not only a myth, even if something is merely an appearance,
politeness is not simply insincere. There is a difference between saying “Hello, how
are you?” and the New York taxi drivers who swear at you. Surfaces do matter. If
you disturb the surfaces you may lose a lot more than you think. You shouldn’t play
with rituals. Masks are never simply mere masks. Perhaps that’s why Brecht became
close to Japan. He also liked this notion that there is nothing really liberating in this
typical western gesture of stealing the masks and showing the true face. What you
discover is something absolutely disgusting. Let’s maintain the appearances, that’s
my own phantasy of Japan.
Panic Quake Servers
Frank Luntz
Author’s Note: Quake is id software’s much-anticipated follow-up to
Doom, the most successful computer game of all time. Addictive,
immersive, and hyperviolent, Quake has already established itself as the
ultimate productivity black hole. Now, across the network, puzzled
system administrators are discovering more and more machines that
have been transformed into secret servers dedicated to managing the
shadow trafhc of non-stop multiplayer deathmatches.
Quake is just one step toward thefirture,
but I think it has a good
shot at spawning
a pretty complicated
online, networked
universe.
MicbaelAbrash,
idprogrammer
Panic Quake Servers are the avant-garde of a parasite nervous system grafting
itself onto the corporate backbone. Bandwidth scavengers hosting the endless
recombinant
congregations of vapourwar.
Forget virtual reality and cyberspace. The ultimate synthesis of architecture
and cinema is already being coded up around you. Forget about soaring over
gleaming spires of data in a weightless universe of pure information.
Quakespace is
claustrophobic,
scatological, pre-pubescent, and very, very dangerous.
And forget about leaving the meat behind: Panic Quake is nothing but
bodies. Bodies splattered, pulverized and exploded. The body fragged and multiplied, becoming pure speed in a point-to-point
network of ammunition
flows and
tactical lust. All-sucking, all-spewing, the Quakebody is projectile and target,
monster and hero, author and interface, key, switch, and trap. It is the body with
nothing but organs, irrupting and transmitting,
and always forever the barricaded
global variable in an infinite cascade of light-speed calculations: surface, perspective,
and line of sight - the baroque codes for subjectivity in the digital space of
deathmatch culture.
Captain Kirk Was Never
the Original
Alan Shapiro
In its prevalent forms, the cottage consumer industry of Star Trek is a classic
virtuality of identification
where the viewers’ senses of self, otherness, and reality are
blurred by the contemplation
of iconic spectacles. The fanatic relationship to media
objects and fetishized paraphernalia
is a partial, transitional realization of the reign
of simulacra, effected at this stage in the logic of the model and its serial differentiation After the original Star Trek series came the animated series, then The Next
Generation, six original series movies, one inter-generational
movie, Deep Space
Nine, Vyager, and now The Next Generation movie (First Contact) and the current
30th anniversary festivities. It is an endless cloned succession, a lineal, self-evolving
pataphysics of re-worked plots, trans-species Federation officers, sentimental
cyborgs, humanoid hyperlife, engineering re-stabilizations
following perturbations,
non-Mobius
time travel, and warp drive accelerations beyond the speed of light.
But this unceasing serial cornmodification
or anabolic self-replication
always
sustains itself through reverent reference to the original referent - the pantheonic
first generation of Captain James T. Kirk, graduate of Star-fleet Academy, First and
Science Oficer $@&# (unpronounceable)
Speck, Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy, Scott, Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, Chapel, and Band. But
Captain Kirk was neuer the original. Attention, red alert, all hailing channels being
jammed, switching to sub-space frequency, and repeating: William Shatner/James T.
Kirk was not the original Captain of the Starship Enterprise.
In the pilot broadcast for the first Star Trek series, entitled “The Cage” (aired
on February 1,1965), the Enterprise (NCC-l-/OlA,
prototype model), wirh
Captain Christopher
Pike (Jeffrey Hunter) in command, answers a mysterious
distress call from long-lost Federation settlers believed to have crashed on the planet
Talos IV. The distress call turns out to have been fabricated by the super-intelligent
beings of Talos to lure Pike and two of his most attractive female crew members
into a zoo-like captivity. After Captain Kirk replaced Captain Pike for the eventual
prime-time series, the footage from “The Cage” was re-edited into a two-part
episode called “The Menagerie” (stardates 3012.4 and 3012.5). The keepers of the
menagerie are so scientifically advanced that they are all brain - they have lost the
capabilities to experience sensory and tactile reality, to feel or emote, and to stroke
the physical world. They seek to benignly imprison two humans (a male and a
female), cut them loose in a high-t’ech digitized parallel-processed
virtual
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Disneyland, and start grooving vicariously on the sensations and emotions. The
Talosians have collected biological specimens from around the galaxy in their zoo,
but the two humans will be their premium ticket to’s virtual reality lust-fest.
Aside from hints about its von Neumann architecture, the underlying
algorithms and class inheritances of the menagerie’s virtuality engine are not
specified. We can assume a ring zero concentric clustering saltation, descendent
from early artificial life programs. Captain Pike and his holographic
computergenerated ideal woman can live out any scenario which is found in the dreamreservoir in Pike’s head (Pike rejects the two female officers in favor of the gentle
hologram as his companion).
Any childhood memory, sexual fantasy, “historical”
time and place, folklore, ftiry tale, vision of home, or galaxial adventure can be
“brought to life” by the menagerie’s virtual reality neural network and wetware. The
ideal woman is synthesized from a reading of Captain Pike’s libidinal unconscious
worked upon the ruined body of an Earth woman who, as a young girl years ago,
was the sole survivor of the crash of the Federation settlers’ spaceship. The scarred,
now fully-grown
woman appears beautiful to Captain Pike through trick
photochronography.
For her part, she has been raised in the zoo by the Talosians
and has never seen a real man before Pike.
In the story of Captain Pike, a much later and conclusive stage in the
accomplishment
of simulacra is invoked. Beyond Star Trek’s predominant
virtuality
of virtuous identification
is the virtuality of the unconditional
worship of simulacra,
a final stage exemplified by digital media’s synthesis of synthetic three-dimensional
video and the jacked-in nervous system. Having completed the pilot episode, the
producers of Star Trek must have realized that they had given birth to a Captain
whose precocious engagement with virtual reality already disqualified him from
serving as the model for a sequel&d succession of media commodities. The
successful media product model has as prerequisite a mythical moment of transcendent creativity which clears the way for the emergence of a new spectacle
object. The spectacle object (celebrity, consumer gadget, media property) then
enters the panoply of fetishes among which we shop in our efforts to find an
identity “niche” and dubiously distinguish ourselves from others. The model serves
as lightning rod for ambivalent collective projections, allowing each individual to
feel unique at the very moment when all consumers of that same niche are imitating the same elevated pattern.
But the fully achieved simulacra of virtual reality threaten the stability and
profitability
of this system of differences. This is why Captain Pike, who was too far
ahead of his time, had to be shunted aside in favor of the valorous Captain Kirk.
The binary oppositions of compartmentalized
analytical thought which uphold the
progress of the media and computer industries (the dualities between original and
copy, mind and body, model and series, real and virtual, reality and information)
begin to break down in the era of consummated virtuality in favor of a perpetual
Mobius strip which appears at all points to have two sides but really has one. The
dichotomy between computer applications which belong to the ofhcial category of
virtual reality software and the rest of computer applications is a prime example of
such increasingly precarious binary oppositions in the computer industry. In the
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first type of virtual reality application (the official product category), a purposive
activity, such as piloting an airplane or meeting a new girlfriend, is simulated both
by providing sensory information
to the user that mimics the real activity, and by
handling changes in perceptual angles caused by the user’s moves through the
cyberspace.’ In the second type of virtual reality application (not recognized as such
by the computer industry), a familiar human activity such as driving in the country
or eating dinner at a restaurant is organized as a virtual machine by the increased
information
that is brought to bear upon it. Claude Shannon, one of the original
Captains of Computer Science, defined information
as the “reduction of uncertainty.” These familiar activities whi.ch become the domain of software applications
were previously “hotbeds of uncerta.inty” needing to be brought under control by a
wallet-sized or car computer. At some point there will no longer be any difference
between the three-dimensional
digital video images displayed outside the window
of the cockpit flight simulator and the three-dimensional
digital video images of
sunny landscapes projected outside the passenger window by the car computer as I
drive through the country on a rainy afternoon. Once we arrive at this point of
convergence between the named virtual simulation of a remote, normally inaccessible activity (like exploring the surface of Mars or meeting a new girlfriend) and the
unnamed virtual simulation of a familiar, accessible human activity (like eating in a
restaurant or meeting a new girlfriend),
then both types of software application
have elaborated their object to the point where the elaborations join together in the
same completed and perfected simmlacra. What was previously calledinformation
and what was called reality become as alike as the two sides of the Mobius strip.
The assumption that information
is a science which is “useful” to a separate, intact
object called reality ignores the ascendence of the seamless, uninterrupted
network
interface (between “knowing”
and object) and its transfiguring
sway. A fully
accomplished virtual network, such as the one which beckoned Captain Pike,
endangers the primacy of the model and the powerful dissemination
of its aura in
the perpetual substitutions and re-arrangements
of the series. The logic of the
charismatic media model and its propagated array of serial distinctions was essential
in supporting the illusion of the uniqueness and individuality
of each consumer of
shared media spectacles. The displacement of this system by immersive or neuraldirect fusion with spectral, holographic environments
portends a potentially
reversible endpoint to the history of images and simulacra.
In the zoo on Talos N, Captain Pike is at first as valorous as Captain Kirk
eventually will be. Although he participates for a while, Pike is not seduced for long
by the virtual reality goodies proffered by the Talosians. His freedom and ontological grounding in reality are more precious to him than fated reunions with loved
ones and pets from his childhood. His sworn duty to “get back to his ship” is more
important than saving the woman of his dreams from monsters in. a Gothic castle.
A polymorphous
perverse prisoner is still a prisoner, and Pike has nothing but
contempt for his over-cerebrated se’dentary voyeuristic captors. He summons all his
cunning, exhorting himself to figure out a way to escape.
Captain Pike discovers a bug in the Talosians’ system, a flaw in their security
software. They have not accounted in their human resources package for the
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77
emotion of raw hatred. When Pike concentrates all his feelings on his hatred of the
Talosians, the processor-generated
force field which surrounds Pike’s cage breaks
down. Pike is able to dart out of the cage and ring his hands around the Talosian
leader’s neck. After this outburst of hatred, the Talosians are only too happy to let
Captain Pike go. They admit that they underestimated
the human species’ aversion
to confinement. They have now discovered that humans are capable of extreme
phenomena, such as radical passions towards others, and extreme phenomena were
not considered in the object-oriented
design of their software. In most cases, proper
software engineering directs that reality is a bug to be fixed in the next release. But a
radical passion like hatred necessitates more than a version patch. To the Talosians,
this vehement human potentiality is like a rogue virus which threatens to bring
down their entire planetary network.
Captain Pike is reunited with the Enterprise crew and Talos IV is classified as
an off-limits planet which all Federation ships are prohibited from going near. But
eleven years later, Captain Pike is involved in a terrible, disastrous accident, a fiery
explosion, and he is left nearly dead. His body, aside from a brutally scarred face, is
destroyed, and his consciousness or soul is transferred into a stationary box or
“housing unit” without prosthetics. His only means of communication
is using the
simplest digital code of beeping once for “yes” and twice for “no”. Faced with this
reduced, diminutive
existence, Captain Pike is reminded of the virtual paradise
offered by the Talosians where he can be “able-bodied”
once again. He now wishes
to return to the menagerie. But by this time, Captain Kirk has taken command of
the Enterprise, and Kirk sees it as his duty to enforce the injunction
against visiting
Talos IV. Mr. $@&# Speck, Pike’s loyal First OfIicer from eleven years back,
commandeers the ship without Captain Kirk’s knowledge (placing his own career at
risk) and brings the homuncular
Pike back to the zoo planet2 Mr. $@&# Speck,
the half-human,
half-Alan Turing logician, is the only offricer to serve under the
Captainships of both Pike and Kirk. For the autistic and quasi-comatose Talosians,
eleven years was just a nanoinstant, and they are waiting to greet Pike with as much
revelry as their atrophied funny bones can muster.
Star Trek has never been considered by science fiction critics for its “secondary
current” of virtual reality themes. But from “The Menagerie” to “All Our Yesterdays” to the pivotal role of the (downtime) holodeck in The Next Generation to the
Deep Space Nine “Shadow Play” villagers, Star Trek is replete with polysemous
“texts” about the last stage of simulacra and virtuality. This minor key throughout
the Star Trek opus can be seen as the lingering symbolic influence of the brief reign
of Captain Pike. According to self-anointed “postmodern”
media critics like Scott
Bukatman and Walter McDougall,
Star Trek is too heroically individualist
to be
much valued as a “text.” Unlike the cyberpunk canon of William Gibson, Blade
Runner, et al. which Bukatman celebrates, Star Trek fails to address or extol the
terminal identity, body electronic, fractal geography, subject-decentering,
ontologyshattering themes and transmigrations
of the digital age. For these postmodern
critics, the recurring effect of Star Trek is to reconfirm the television or movie
viewers’ belief “that we can subsume our individualism
into the rationality of
systems yet retain our humanity still.” The popularity of Star Trek is attributed to
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our delight in the “human qualities of Captain Kirk,” which “are always victorious
over the very technological mega-systems that make [his] adventures possible.“’ It
may be correct that Captain Kirk’s outwitting of evil empires and evil computers
through use of logical paradox and human foible reinforces traditional postEnlightenment
(Captains of Industry) subjectivity. But what Kirks antics are always
debunking are the computer’s pretentions to artificial intelligence. Kirk gets it on in
a metaphoric three-dimensional
chess match against super-computers
like Landru
(“The Return of the Archons”), Nomad (“The Changeling”),
Vaal (“The Apple”),
and the Daystrom-clone
(“The Ultimate Computer”).
These voice-enabled computers all seek to rise above their programming
and think for themselves, but they
always lack that certain little human je ne sais quoi. The Pentagon could have saved
billions on futile artificial intelligence research if it had watched these early Star Trek
episodes. But, as Bill Gates and Kevin Kelly (those amiable prophets of the wired
world and the interactive network) remind us, artificial intelligence was always a
detour, and never the destination, of the computer.4 It was the complex-systems side
of cybernetics, not the artificial intel.ligence side, which would lead to the true
destiny of the computer: virtual reality.
One of Marshall McLuhan’s discursive descendants has recently said that the
effects of television on the world and how we see it were invisible until McLuhan
“pointed out TV.“5 One of the obstacles to seeing virtualily today, and the grave
dangers which loom through its mist, is that we believe in an enterprise called
science - the epistemology, methodology,
and applications of which have supposedly ushered in a grand and eternal age of progress and wizardry. We have constructed a pantheon of original scientific heroes, whose heroism derives from their
original acts of having been the first to investigate the physical objects of the world
independent
from any prejudicial system of interpretation.
We neglect to scrutinize
what really happened at the primal anthropological
scene of the beginnings of
scientific method and the first Captains of science. At the back end of the chronology, we have been equally remiss in failing to observe that the privileging
of the
autonomy of the physical object was a phase which came to an end in the midtwentieth century, at the time of the invention of the virtuality engine known as the
computer and the new “sciences” of information
and bio-cybernetic
complex
systems.
According to Bill Gates, we will soon work, learn, make friends, shop, explore
cultures, and be entertained from the privacy of our homes and without leaving our
armchairs. On the post-Web Internet, which Gates calls the interactive network, we
will enter into total immersion cyber-environments
via our high-bandwidth
connections. This penetration to the other side of the screen is but the latest step in
the civilizational
project of creating a second, doubled, substitute world - a
movement from reality to virtuality. The virtuality syndrome arose as a consequence
of the scientific revolutions which caused humanity to feel its insignificance and
transience in contrast to the permanent and consequential status of the objective,
natural world. Other cultures had dealt with human death in an integrated way
through symbolic rituals and sacrifice, and with the cosmos through the mediation
of mythology, but it was our destiny to face down the harsh reality principles of
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79
mortality and an external world of permanent, inexorable, superior laws. Confronted with this severity, we felt anxiety and ultimately developed an immortalily
neurosis or virtuality syndrome to manage our distress. To match the permanence of
the “laws of nature,” we devised our own project of step-by-step constructing a
media permanence which we would then eventually jump into. The immortality
neurosis is exhibited in the new American business of customers having their heads
preserved after death so they can someday have their consciousnesses revived and
transferred into robotic bodies when science has reached that stage of progress. But
the immortality
or virtuality syndrome is also manifest in the interactive networks
and in all of the mass media in their earlier, transitional forms.
Anteceding the legend of the original heroic scientists is the seminal, primal
scene of the initial stirrings in “tribal” societies of the gaze on the autonomou object.
This was the transformation
from a symbolic, intimate relationship to the object to
an operational, percipient one discussed, for example, by Bataille in Theory of
Religion. This neglected transmutational
scene resembles the unexamined “text”
which antecedes the legend of the original heroic Captain Kirk: the primal scene of
the virtuality decisions of Captain Christopher Pike.
For Captain Pike, the appeal of virtuality is relative. Compared with the ablebodied, open-spaced conditions of vitality, mobility, and irreducible language,
virtual reality is a sham. It is a spurious and pale facsimile of life, and Pike will have
no truck with it. But compared to the degraded conditions of immobility
and
digital inarticulateness
(reduced to the unravelled binary code of communication)
virtual reality is preferred. From the standpoint of spatial, quadriplegic,
and
semantic incapacitation,
and on&fi om this standpoint, virtual reality is accepted and
embraced. As long as Captain Pike has a body, he is not seduced to make the leap
beyond the screen to the full achievement of simulacra. Once he no longer has a
body, he is ready to put on his data body suit, goggles, and glove. At the dawn of
Kirk’s term as Captain, and the seminal confusion of his status as original or copy,
we have a powerful statement about the new interactive networks. It is only from
the position of an already debased spatial immobility
and urban hyperconcentration
that we are prepared to embrace the doubled, substitute world of virtuality. Fellow
homunculi,
where do you want to go today?h
So Pike, the true first-born, was whisked away into virtual reality and
replaced by the changeling Kirk. There was, of course, another way forward for
Captain Pike, but the screenwriters of “The Menagerie” were unfortunately
ignorant of the basics of writing operating systems software drivers for peripheral
devices. Since Pike’s bio-rehabilitation
programmers had succeeded in resuscitating
at least one controllable
nerve impulse from his consciousness, and connecting the
discrete signals of this impulse across the synaptic gap to an output device (the
beeping for “yes” or “no”), further layers of software to drive more sophisticated
output devices and sound cards would certainly be possible. From the single binary
registering of a 0 or a 1, an entire operational language (a full digital communication) can be devised. One merely has to enumerate and combine varied sequences
of Os and IS as discrete identifiers in an infinitely permutated system. The only
drawback would be that Pike’s consciousness itself would always remain at the level
I
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of the lowest machine language, fbrced to perpetually master and will&the lengthy
binary sequences in order to express himself! He would literally be the machine and
its finally awakened artificial intelligence.
Another episode of the original Star Sk series, “All Our Yesterdays,” presents
us with a beautiful, succinct metaphor for the scientific revolution and the virtuality
syndrome. Captain Kirk, Mr. $@& Speck, and Dr. McCoy beam down to the
planet Sarpeidon, which belongs t.o a solar system the sun of which is about to
explode as a supernova. The plane:t’s political leaders and chief scientists have
known of this impending catastrophic event for a long time and have diligently
implemented
a digital survival plan. After the sun goes supernova, the planet will
become permanently
uninhabitable,
but the inhabitants will not be faced with their
deaths. The planet’s entire new media resources have been mobilized into the
construction of a vast library and (computer administered
by technicians. The
library does not contain books, but rather tapes in canisters which store the virtual
content of all occurrences in the planet’s history. In the waning days before the
supernova catastrophe, each inhabitant selects his favorite historical time from‘the
library’s vast archives, has a technician retrieve and insert the chosen tape into an
input device, and passes through a portal from which he or she can never return
again. Any attempt to return will result in instant death, since the subject’s genetic
code has been altered for adaptation to the destination historical peridd. The time
portal is the focal point of the library, and through it each inhabitant makes a
definitive exit from the planet’s dying reality. At the very last moment before the
supernova explosion, the principal technician inserts his personal tape and heads off
to the most exclusive virtual history theme park.
The heliocentric discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo ignited a kind of
metaphoric supernova explosion. The Copernican model of the sun-earth relationship, which challenged and replaced the geocentric universe of Ptolemy, was not
accepted for centuries due to the anxiety about our status in the cosmos which it
provoked. Humans, created in Gosd’s image, were no longer the centei of the
universe. The sun does not revolve around the earth as was previouslyfbelieved;
the
earth revolves around the sun. Wi:th Copernicus, the sun expanded and the virtuality syndrome was given an anti-gravitational
boost. Physical reality and its classical
laws (which only operate until you approach light speed, or the hyperbolic speed of
the media and computers) were elevated to a sovereign, more permanent status in
relation to mortals. On Sarpeidon (“All Our Yesterdays”) the course of the virtuality
syndrome is played out at accelerated speed. The original physical reality of
Sarpeidon is wiped out by the supernova of its sun. But a second, substitute, cloned
reality has been preserved for the planet’s inhabitants thanks to the virtuality engine
of digital technology. The Sarpeidonians
can go anywhere they want to go - on a
one-way ticket.
For the cool experimenters in jacked-in data-suited subject-decentering
terminal identity like Scott Bukatman, or the writers of cyborg manifestoes like
Donna Haraway, Star Trek is a conventional media industry which never stops
showing the same old reruns of gendered and immune system “tropes” like military
hardware, space adventures, and extra-terrestrial
invaders.’ But Star Tfek is an
Digital
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81
ordinary screen, and like Bukowski’s ordinary madness, it is ironically and seductively reversible. It may even be one of the “texts” which, in its minor key, is
pointing the way towards that ultimate reversibility of things that is set in motion at
the moment when reality and information
reach the point of their final (and fatal)
inter-changeability.8
One must read Star 7Tek against Star Eek. As in other ordinary
screens, like Fox Football or video poker or Windows 97, the apparently dominant
“window” has been “re-sized”; it has been turned oblique or spun diagonally into
the background with respect to the physical screen, making room for other, less
ideologically stable, “windows. ” We can no longer presume that viewers see a
univocal screen or hear only the monotonic drone of an idiot box. The enduring
popularity of Star Eek may indicate a fascination and engagement by the mass of
viewers with motifs of their own disappearing reality.
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Notes
1. In Japan, a multimedia
CD-ROM
application
called “Heartthrob
MemoriaI”
recently
sold
more than a million
copies and spawned
a nationwide
industry
of virtual
girl love
worship.
The interactive
program
re-writes
the (mis)adventures
of a young male student
who was often rejected during his high school years by girls whom he fancied. The
product
was developed
by a prognunmer
who says that he wanted to undo his own
memories
of rejection.
See Andrew
Pollack, “Japan’s Newest
Heartthrobs
are Sexy,
Talented
and Virtual”
in The New York 7imes, November
25, 1996. Reality can be
simulated,
but it can aho be made to turn out differently
from how it did the first time.
These “o&ial
virtuaI reahty” software
applications
are informationaI
machines,
either for
simulation
or daydreamhke
transformation.
2. An homuncuhts
is a miniature
body believed by some early medical theorists
to be
contained
in spermatozoon,
or a graphical
projection
on the cerebral cortex which depicts
parts of the body under voluntary
motoric
control.
In Philip K. Dick’s science fiction
novel Dr. Bloodmonq
(1965),
the .homunculus
is a (former)
quadriplegic
who, in a postapocalypse
society, goes from a state of disability
to one of hyperability
(leapfrogging
normal humans)
after being equipped
with special government-supplied
prosthetics.
3. Walter A. McDougall,
The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. New
York: Basic Books, 1985; p. 449. Scott Bukatman,
Terminal Identity:
The Virtual Subject
in Post-Modern
Science Fiction.
Durham:
Duke University
Press, 1993. The quotation
is
from McDougall,
cited by Bukatman.
4. ‘Although
I believe that event&y
there will be programs
that will re-create some
elements
of human intelligence,
I (don’t think it’s likely to happen in my lifetime...
So far
every prediction
about major advances in artificial
intelligence
has proved to be overly
optimistic...
progress in artificial
intelligence
research is . . . incredibly
slow.” Bill Gates,
The RoadAhead.
London:
Penguin,
1996; pp. 289-290.
Kelly describes the field of
and having failed “to produce
usefulness.”
Kevin
artificial
intelligence
as being “stiIIborn,”
Kelly, Out of Control:
The New Biology ofhfachines,
Social Systems, and the Economic
World. New York: Addison-Wesley,
1994; p. 453.
with Derrick
de Kerckhove,
in Wired, October
5. “What
Would
McLuhan
Say?“, interview
1996, p. 149.
6. “Where do you want to go today?” is a Microsoft
advertising
slogan, recently
superceded
in
Europe by the “what a wonlrfil
world’ campaign.
7. Donna J. Haraway,
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention
ofNature.
New York:
Routledge,
1991; pp. 204-205.
8. “What
we must do is think this unconditional
realization
of the world, which is at the
same time its unconditional
simulacrum.
What we lack most is a conceptualization
of the
completion
of reality.” Jean Baudrillard,
The Perfect Crime (translated
by Chris Turner).
London:
Verso, 1996; p. 65.
.
The 90s began with a blast of techno-utopianism,but it
will end with slow suicidein the surplusstreets.Net politics
is the story of the 90s as a radically split reality: surplus
class and virtual class, surplus flesh and virtual flesh,
separateand digitally unequal.
Infobahn Blues
Robert Adrian X
Since American Vice-President
Al Gore made his famous speech in California
a few years ago, it has become impossible to scan any news medium without finding
at least one reference to the “Information
Superhighway”.
The Information
Superhighway metaphor - specially tailored for Mr. Gore’s California audience - is so
brilliantly simplistic it seems to have blown the mind of every media editor in the
Western Hemisphere. With an Information
Superhighway
you just plug in your
modem and roll your data out onto the ramp and into the dataflow where it zips
along the freeway until it hits the appropriate off-ramp. Finding data is the same it’s all nice straight data-lanes with on and off ramps and well-banked curves. You
pick your way through the interchanges - just like L.A. commuting
only much
more comfortable. The Superhighway
metaphor does not threaten the status quo or
challenge the prevailing ideologies as did “Cyberspace,” that other, earlier, name for
the net coined by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Cyberspace has no highways
or interchanges or even directions, it is just a vast universe of connections in a
multi-dimensional
data-field. You can get lost in Cyberspace, it is dark and threatening and infested with spikey-haired hackers with dirty fingernails and shabby
hardware. Cyberspace is infinite, chaotic and scary while Mr. Gore’s Superhighway
is finite, linear and very familiar - at least to suburban Americans, who are, after
all, his constituents. The Infobahn is driven by folks just like us. It is bright and
sunny, with friendly groves of data stretching off into the distance on either side.
The Superhighway
metaphor tames Cyberspace, making it acceptable in the average
American home, something the whole family can enjoy. The datamobile can be
parked in the family garage. The Information
Superhighway
cornmodifies data in the form of things like on-line video games, movies, mail-order catalogues - so
that it can be marketed just like any other consumer product. Don’t drive down to
the mall just call it up on the net.
It’s all telephone of course and the Infobahn is just a broadband version of the
old-fashioned
telephone. Not the deregulated, digitized business tool but the
telephone that was an open system, with party lines and nosey operators. We could
call our era the “Telephone Era” or the 20th century the “Telephone Century”
without much exaggeration. The telephone was, and still is, the only generally
available, unprogrammed,
participatory,
personal and interactive communications
medium - aside from face-to-face contact. Programmed broadcasting media like
radio and television are universally available via satellite, microwave, or cable
networks but they are one-way systems in which a commodity - information,
entertainment,
services - is distributed to a consuming, or potentially consuming,
Digital
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85
public. Feedback from these systems is in the form of the “body count” of viewers/
listeners or in the analyses of sales figures for the advertised products. With the
telephone on the other hand, it is the service itself which is the commodity and the
user supplies his or her own content - that is: the users communicate
in a two-way
exchange between equal partners. In this sense the telephone network is a public
space, a meeting place open to all who have telephone access.
In this age of property-fetishism,
the odd thing about “telephone space” is
that nobody owns it - not the telephone companies because they only provide the
service, not governments which merely meddle, snoop and regulate, nor the users
who simply take it for granted - like rain or electricity. And here lies the problem:
public utilities or spaces are not amenable to policies of profit maximisation.
In a
low-cost/low-quality
two-way communications
system like the telephone, value
added services are extremely limited and growth, in a saturated market like North
America or Western Europe, has become sluggish. Most telephone users just want
to talk to each other and send a few faxes back and forth. The cake is too small and,
since deregulation,
the cake-eaters too many, The answer appears to be: increase
bandwidth!
Increased bandwidth allows telephone space to be appropriated
for
commercial propaganda; occupied by infotainment
commodities; turned into a
shopping mall. Increased bandwidth is not very interesting for those who simply
want to talk to each other - and people who just want to talk to each other are
even less interesting to the new telecom corporations whose profits will come
mostly from the products and services they sell or rent online. What these corporations really want is interactive cable TV - with the interactivity restricted to online
shopping, video games and pay-to-view movies - with the telephone thrown in as
a give-away because it requires almost no space on the cable. The Infobahn in this
definition is little more than a catalogue of products, services, information
and
entertainment
that can be ordered or purchased and consumed on line. Mr. Gore’s
Superhighway
is really an electronic “Golden Mile,“. there to be cruised, like any
suburban shopping strip, for entertainment,
sex, fun and consumables.
In reality the Superhighway simply projects existing aspects of western social
and cultural behaviour onto the new electronic communications
systems. Its
attraction as a metaphor is that it suggests that everything will be just like now but
much much better; more convenient, more comfortable - more home entertainment, easier shopping, less commuting. The ubiquitous TV screens scattered about
the average middle-class home will become windows into “Cyberspace” which has
been paved over for convenient data-cruising. Office workers can download their
daily tasks at the breakfast table and upload their day’s work into the corporation
mainframe at the end of 8 hours on the Infobahn - then flip into infotainment
mode and surf 400 channels of consumdata. The network behind the flickering
screen is there, like the labour-saving
peripherals and hi-tech household appliances,
for the sole purpose of making life more comfortable for post-industrial
suburban
mankind - and more profitable for the corporations. No notice is taken of the fact
that, even now, most of the bandwidth of the new networks is being used by
computers communicating
with each other, completely independent
of human
“users,” programmers or controllers - and the tendency is rising. The huge volume
86
Digital
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of data traffic between computers is already clogging the telephone system and the
growth of computer communications
- internet and other networks, online data
banks, email etc. - is clogging it more every day. Even four years ago it was
estimated that 50% of all telephone calls in the U.S.A. were by computers exchanging data. A broadband high-speed network for communication
between computers
has become a neccessity and the “Irifobahn”
is just a handy name for that network
- a network of fibre-optic cable carrying large volumes of digital data at high speed
between computers, using a standard protocol.
But Mr. Gore’s linear Superhighway
metaphor gets into trouble here too. A
two-dimensional
data-flow plan can look like a road map and road-like routes and
junctions can be interpreted even in three dimensional
renderings of data hierarchies and search-paths, but it is clear that a “network” of connections, comprised of
enormous quantities of data-interacting
simultaneously
and at the speed of light,
has little in common with a Superhighway - no matter how many lanes and levels
and interchanges it has.,The data network predicted by the introduction
of
broadband transmission systems is much better described by the non-linear notion
of “Cyberspace” - an image of a multi-dimensional
matrix of interwoven data,
mater&sing
and de-materialising
almost randomly. It is hard to imagine being a
“user” in such an environment,
but it might be possible to be a participant or to be
simply present.
The assumption embedded in the Superhighway metaphor is that, in spite of
the way so many aspects of our society and culture have been revolutionized
by
these new digital and communications
technologies, nothing has really changed and that the program of machine development is entirely for the benefit and
convenience of the human “user.” So not only does it fail to address the cultural
ramifications
of the new technologies, the Superhighway
uncritically and
opportunistically
supports the master-servant relationship of man-machine.
By
treating the monitor/TV
screen as the datamobile windshield and putting the
’
human “user” in the driver’s seat at the focal point of the network, the branching
pathways of that specific user’s interaction with the data-flow can be made to appear
highway-like.
But one is seldom alone online and each user has his or her own datahighway which, taken together, combine and recombine at every instant, creating
an incalculable tangle of paths which cause data-space to be reconstructed, nanosecond by nanosecond, in response to “user” activity at the keyboard. If we locate the
“user” in the centre of the network and make the network a creation and servant of
the “user” it-implies that, should no “user” be active, the network is idling, doing
maintenance-like
things, waiting for someone to press a key, like an arcade game
waiting for a coin in the slot. Which is, of course, absurd because we also know that
the computer networks control, with or without human presence; electricity supply,
water supply, transportations
systems, inventories and accounting, telephone and
communications
networks, and the whole infrastructure
of world finance - stock
markets, insurance, banking, not to mention government, corporate and military
surveillance and control programs.
Absurdities and contradictions
are the rule rather than the exception in the
rhetoric of the new electronic media. The two-dimensional
silliness of the Super-
Digital
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87
highway metaphor is minor compared, for example, to the arrogance of the pretence of a universal world-wide
telephone network. Everyone really knows that no
more than 10% of the world’s population now have personal access to a telephone
at home, and that, for most people alive today, a private telephone is an unimaginable luxury. But this knowledge has not prevented enormous amounts of money
being invested in global telecommunications
programs (mostly involving valueadded services and peripherals) on the assumption that the telephone is already, for
all intents and purposes, ubiquitous. Two realities appear to collide here the reality
of the planet and its actual inhabitants and the reality of the virtual world of the
communications
infrastructure
inhabited by users/consumers. Having no telephones and little purchasing power, the vast majority of humanity cannot achieve
“user/consumer”
status, except as consumers of the old movies and sitcoms rained
down on them from the satellites (tuning in on the cheap radio and TV receivers
which have replaced the bags of beads and bolts of cheap cloth that were used a
century or two ago to buy the land and undermine the cultures of the new world).
But in our media-dominated
culture the virtual reality of the television image is so
powerful that “media-reality”
is more real than actual experience and the majority of
humanity is invisible, appearing only sporadically in connection with some natural
catastrophe, war or revolution. That is: it becomes “news”‘and its misery becomes a
commodity for the infotainment
media. The stupefying naivety of the technologydazed but well-meaning,
politically correct and liberal Internet user who believes
that all problems will be solved when everyone is wired into the “World Wide Web”
is symptomatic of the schizophrenia of (post-) modern media culture. When
reading about or contemplating
the amazing techno-future
promised by the
superhighway propagandists and cyber-industry
barons it is wise to remember that
it applies only to those of us with telephones, electronic gadgetry and purchasing
power.
But the real conflict and confusion is in the ontological problem of the manmachine relationship. The history of the development of mechanical and electronic
machinery is really the story of the development of metal or silicon “slaves” obedient automata with super-human strength and endurance. In this context, for
example, artificial intelligence and robotics research can be understood as a part of
the age-old dream of creating autonomous humanoid servants. The computer itself
is the result of such a program: to build obedient number-crunching
auto-nerds to
carry out the drudgery of complex mathematical calculations. Many scientists,
theoreticians and researchers in the field of computer and robot development still
believe that they are creating or dealing with prothesis-like electronic/mechanical
devices - extensions of the human brain and body. In the same way that robots are
usually portrayed as humanoid, (although our world is actually full of robotic
devices which go mostly unnoticed because they are entirely unlike humans: the
coffee-automat
in the corridor, the thermostat on the central heating, the telephone
answering machine) the human brain is usually the model invoked in most descriptions and explanations of what a truly interactive electronic (“neural”) communications network might be like. The human brain is the only model of intelligence that
we can recognize or respect even though the electronic devices which we have
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created, and to which much of the control of our most vital social, political and
financial infrastructure
has been delegated, seem to have an intelligence very
different from the human model.
It is generally agreed among computer scientists that the human brain, or the
brain of any animal for that matter, possesses a capacity for information
processing
far greater than that of any conceivable intelligent machine. But most of the power
of the animal brain is dedicated to moving around in - and interacting with the world, constantly processing enormous amounts of rapidly changing data in real
time. Human intelligence is, unfortunately,
also cluttered up with distracting things
like angst, sex, pleasure, jealousy - not to mention families, games, careers and
drugs. Computers on the other hand are largely indifferent to the world. Being
mostly stationary, computers just sit and think - that is: they process information
gathered by mobile agents - such as people - who are good at moving around in
the world hunting and gathering data.
In some ways therefore, the “slaves” are already being served by their masters.
In fact the “slaves” have become so efficient in carrying out their delegated tasks
that it is in our own interest to make them more “intelligent,”
more autonomous,
so that we can delegate even more of the organizational
drudgery to them. It is also
in our interest to give the machines the capability of being able to detect and resist
potentially damaging penetration by increasingly sophisticated and resourceful
intruders, which means that they must be made, in a sense, conscious - if only at
the level of an oyster.
If we want a model or metaphor for machine intelligence it must be looked
for in places where data in an extremely simple form - as simple as digital code is exchanged in networks linking immobile or barely mobile forms of life: in forests,
shellfish colonies, ant hills. In a true network nothing moves. Once the data is in
the network it is universally present - it does not travel anywhere and you don’t
travel anywhere to find it. This is what is so hard for mobile industrial cultures to
understand and what is so exciting about the notion of Cyberspace. In Gibson’s
Ahromancer
the protagonist “jacks in” to the net. He is not a user, he is not at the
wheel of his datamobile speeding down the Infobahn - he simply disappears into
the net and becomes a part of the data-flow.
Cyberspace is so different from the Superhighway
because the element of
human-centricity
is missing or at least it is not in the foreground. You are not in
control of cyberspace, it is not there for your comfort and convenience and no-one
is driving it. There is no suggestion in the notion of cyberspace that, should human
beings suddenly cease to exist - or destroy themselves in some nuclear folly - the
network of machines that constitme cyberspace would vanish with them. Cyberspace assumes that the machines we have built will soon, in some leap of almost
magical synergy, break free of their creators to constitute, by means of the communications networks we are generously building for them, a universe or nature of an
entirely new and different order.
Perhaps they already have.
Digital Humanism
The ProcessedWorld
of Marshall McLuhan
Arthur Ki-oker
Marshall McLuhan was never the technotopian that contemporary
technophiles like to portray. To read McLuhan is to discover a thinker
who had a decidedly ambivalent perspective on teebnoculture. Thus,
while McLuban might be the patron saint of technotopians, his
imagination is also the memory that should haunt them. As a way of
understanding McLuhan anew, we include this account of McLuban’s
ambivalent relationship to technology Titled “Digital Humanism: The
Processed World of Marshall McLuhan,” this excerpt is from Arthur
Kroker’s Technology and the Canadian Mind Innis/McLuhan/Grant (New
York: St. Martin’s Press).
Processed World
Not the least of McLuhan’s contributions
to the study of technology was that
he transposed the literary principle of metaphor/metonymy
(the play between
structure and process) into a historical methodology
for analysing the rise and fall of
successive media of communication.
In McLuhan’s discourse, novels are the already
obsolescent content of television; writing “turned a spotlight on the high, dim
Sierras of speech;“’ the movie is the “mechanization
of movement and gesture;“Z the
telegraph provides us with “diplomacy without walls;“3 just as “photography
is the
mechanization
of the perspective painting and the arrested eye.“‘To read McLuhan
is to enter into a “vortex” of the critical, cultural imagination,
where “fixed perspective” drops off by the way, and where everything passes over instantaneously
into its
opposite. Even the pages of the texts in Explorations, The Medium is the Massage,
The Vanishing Point, or From Clich& to Archetype are blasted apart, counterblasted
actually, in an effort to make reading itself a more subversive act of the artistic
imagination.
Faithful to his general intellectual project of exposing the invisible
environment
of the technological sensorium, McLuhan sought to make of the text
itself a “counter-gradient”
or “probe” for forcing to the surface of consciousness the
silent structural rules, the “imposed assumptions” of the technological environment
within which we are both enclosed and “processed.” In The Medium is the Massage,
McLuhan insisted that we cannot understand the technological experience from the
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outside. We can only comprehend how the electronic age “works us over” if we
“recreate the experience” in depth and mythically, of the processed world of
technology.
All media work us over completely. They are so persuasive in their
personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical,
and social consequences-that they leave no part of us untouched,
unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding
of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the
way media work as environments.5
And McLuhan was adamant on the immanent relationship of technology and
biology, on the fact that “the new media.. . are nature’16 and this for the reason that
technology refers to the social and psychic “extensions” or “outerings” of the human
body or senses. McLuh an could be so universal and expansive in his description of
the media of communication
- his studies of communication
technologies range
from writing and speech to the telephone, photography,
television, money, comic
books, chairs and wrenches - because he viewed all technology as the pushing of the
‘archetypal forms of the unconscious out into social consciousness.“‘When
McLuhan noted in Counter Blast that “environment
is process, not container,“*he
meant just this: the effect of all new technologies is to impose, silently and pervasively, their deep assumptions upon the human psyche by reworking the “ratio of
the senses.”
Au media are extensions of some human faculty - psychic or physicaL
Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense
perceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and
act - the way we perceive the world. When these ratios change, MEN
CHANGE.“’
For McLuhan, it’s a processed world now. As we enter the electroriic age with
its instantaneous and global movement of information,
we are the first human
beings to live completely within the mediated environment
of the technostructure
The “content” of the technostructure
is largely irrelevant (the “content” of a new
technology is always the technique which has just been superseded: movies are the
content of television; novels are the content of movies) or, in fact, a red herring
distracting our attention from the essential secret of technology as the medium, or
environment,
within which human experience is programmed.
It was McLuhan’s
special genius to grasp at once that the content (metonymy) of new technologies
serves as a “screen,” obscuring from view the disenchanted locus of the technological experience in its purely “formal” or “spatial” properties. McLuhan wished to
escape the “flat earth approach” to technology, to invent a “new metaphor” by
which we might “restructure our thoughts and feelings” about the subliminal,
imperceptible
environments
of media effects.”
In this understanding,
technology is an “extension” of biology: the expansion
of the electronic media as the “metaphor” or “environment”
of twentieth-century
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91
experience implies that, for the first time, the central nervous system itself has been
exteriorized. It is our plight to be processed through the technological simulacrum;
.to participate intensively and integrally in a ‘technostructure”
which is nothing but
a vast simulation and “amplification”
of the bodily senses. Indeed, McLuhan often
recurred to the “narcissus theme” in classical mythology as a way of explaining our
fatal fascination with technology, viewed not as “something external” but as an
extension, or projection, of the sensory faculties of the human species.
Media tend to isolate one or another sense from the others. The result is
hypnosis. The other extreme is withdrawing of sensation with resulting
hallucination as in dreams or DT’s, etc.. . Any medium, by dilating
sense to fill the whole field, creates the necessary conditions of hypnosis
in that area. This explains why at no time has any culture been aware of
the effect of its media on its overall association, not even retrospectively.12
All of McLuhan’s writings are an attempt to break beyond the “Echo” of the
Narcissus myth, to show that the “technostructure”
is an extension or “repetition”
of
ourselves. In his essay, “The Gadget Lover,” McLuhan noted precisely why the
Greek myth of Narcissus is of such profound relevance to understanding
the
technological
experience.
The youth Narcissus (narcissus means narcosis or numbing) mistook his
own reflection in the water for another person. This extension of himself
by mirror numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism
of his own extended or repeated image. The nymph Echo tried to win
his love with fragments of his own speech, but in vain. He was numb.
He had adapted to his extension of himself and had become a closed
system. Now the point of this myth is the fact that men at once become
fascinated by any extension of themselves in any material other than
themselves.”
Confronted with the hypnotic effect of the technological sensorium,
McLuhan urged the use of any “probe” - humour, paradox, analogical juxtaposition, absurdity - as a way of making visible the “total field effect” of technology as
medium. This is why, perhaps, McLuhan’s intellectual project actually circles back
on itself, and is structured directly into the design of his texts. McLuhan makes the
reader a “metonymy”
to his “metaphor:” he transforms the act of “reading
McLuhan”
into dangerous participation
in a radical experiment which has, as its
end, the exploration of the numbing of consciousness in the technological massage.
Indeed, to read McLuhan is to pass directly into the secret locus of the “medium is
the massage”; to experience anew the “media” (this time the medium of writing) as
a silent gradient of ground-rules.
No less critical than George Grant of the human fate in technological society,
McLuhan’s imagination
seeks a way out of our present predicament by recovering a
highly ambivalent attitude towards the objects of technostructure.
Thus, while
Grant writes in William James’ sense of a “block universe” of the technological
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dynamo, seeing only tendencies towards domination,
McLuhan privileges a
historically specific study of the media of communication.
In an early essay (1955),
“A Historical Approach to the Media,” McLuhan said that if we weren’t “to go on
being helpless illiterates” in the new world of technology, passive victims as the
“media themselves act directly toward shaping our most intimate self-consciousness,” then we had to adopt the attitude of the artist.14 “The mind of the artist is
always the point of maximal sensitivity and resourcefulness in exposing altered
realities in the common culture.“‘s McLuhan would make of us “the artist, the
sleuth, the detective” in gaining a critical perspective on the history of technology
which “just as it began with writing ends with television.“i6 Unlike Grant’s reflections on technology which are particularistic
and existential, following a downward
spiral (the famous Haligonian
“humbug”)
into pure content: pure will, pure
remembrance, pure duration, McLuhan’s thought remains projective, metaphorical,
and emancipatory. Indeed, Grant’s perspective on technology is Protestant to the
core in its contemplation
of the nihilism of liberal society. But if Grant’s tragic
inquiry finds its artistic analogue in Colville’s To Prince Edward Island, then
McLuhan’s discourse is more in the artistic tradition of Georges Seurat, the French
painter, and particularly in one classic portrait, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of
La Grande Jatte. McLuhan always accorded Seurat a privileged position as the “art
fulcrum between Renaissance visual and modern tactile. The coalescing of inner
and outer, subject and object.“” McLuhan was drawn to Seurat in making painting
a “light source” (a “light through situation”). Seurat did that which was most
difficult and decisive: he dipped the viewer into the “vanishing point” of the
painting. I8 Or as McLuhan said, and in prophetic terms, Seurat (this ‘precursor of
TV”) presented us with a searing visual image of the age of the “anxious object.“19
Now, to be sure, the theme of anxiety runs deep through the liberal side of
the Canadian mind. This is the world of Margaret Atwood’s “intolerable
anxiety”
and of Northrop Frye’s “anxiety structure. ” But McLuhan is the Canadian thinker
who undertook a phenomenology
of anxiety, or more precisely a historically relative
study of the sources of anxiety and stress in technological
society. And he did so by
the simple expedient of drawing us, quickly and in depth, into Seurat’s startling and
menacing world of the anxious, stressful objects of technology. In his book, Through
the Ihnishing Point, McLuhan said of Seurat that “by utilizing the Newtonian
analysis of the fragmentation
of light, he came to the technique of divisionism,
whereby each dot of paint becomes the equivalent of an actual light source, a sun,
as it were. This device reversed the traditional perspective by making the viewer the
vanishing point.“20The significance of Seurat’s “reversal” of the rules of traditional
perspective is that he abolished, once and for all, the medieval illusion that space is
neutral, or what is the same, that we can somehow live “outside” the processed
world of technology. With Seurat a great solitude and, paradoxically, a greater
entanglement
falls on modern being. “We are suddenly in the world of the “Anxious Object” which is prepared to take the audience inside the painting process
itself.“21 Following C. S. Lewis in The Discarded Image, McLuhan noted exactly
what this “flip” in spatial perspective meant. Rather than looking in according to
the traditional spatial model of medieval discourse, modern man is suddenly
,
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“looking out.” “L’kI e one looking out from the saloon entrance onto the dark
Atlantic, or from the lighted porch upon the dark and lonely moors.“**The
lesson
of Seurat is this: modernity is coeval with the age of the “anxious object” because we
live now, fully, within the designed environment
of the technological sensorium.23
For McLuhan, we are like astronauts in the processed world of technology. We now
take our “environment”
with us in the form of technical “extensions” of the human
body or senses. The technostructure
is both the lens through which we experience
the world, and, in fact, the “anxious object” with which human experience has
become imperceptibly,
almost subliminally, merged.24
Now, McLuhan often remarked that in pioneering the DEW line, Canada
had also provided a working model for the artistic imagination
as an “early warning
Seurat’s artistic representasystem “*5in sensing coming shifts in the technostructure.
tion of the spatial reversal at work in the electronic age, a reversal which plunges us
into active participation
in the “field” of technological experience, was one such
early warning system. It was, in fact, to counteract our “numbing”
within the age of
the anxious object that McLuhan’s literary and artistic imagination,
indeed his
whole textual strategy, ran to the baroque. As an intellectual strategy, McLuhan
favoured the baroque for at least two reasons: it privileged “double perspective and
contrapuntal
theming;” and it sought to “capture the moment of change in order to
release energy dramatically. “*“There is, of course, a clear and decisive connection
between McLuhan’s attraction to Seurat as an artist who understood the spatial
grammar of the electronic age and his fascination with the baroque as a method of
literary imagination.
If, indeed, we are now “looking out” from inside the technological sensorium; and if, in fact, in the merger of biology and technology which is
the locus of the electronic age, “we” have become the vanishing points of technique,
then a way had to be discovered for breaching the “invisible environment”27 within
which we are now enclosed. For McLuhan, the use of the baroque in each of his
writings, this constant resort to paradox, double perspective, to a carnival of the
literary imagination
in which the pages of the texts are forced to reveal their
existence also as a ‘medium,”
was also a specific strategy aimed at “recreating the
experience” of technology as massage. Between Seurat (a radar for “space as process”) and baroque (a “counter-gradient”):
that’s the artistic strategy at work in
McLuhan’s imagination
as he confronted the subliminal, processed world of
electronic technologies.
Tracking
Technology
I: The Catholic
Legacy
There is a deep, thematic unity in all of McLuhan’s writings, extending from
his later studies of technology in Understanding Media, The Medium is the Massage,
The Gutenberg Galaxy and Counter Blast to his earlier, more classical, writings in
The Interior Landscape, The Vanishing Point and also including his various essays in
reviews ranging from the Sewanee Review to the Teacher; College Record. McLuhan’s
discourse was culturally expansive, universalist, and spatially oriented precisely
because his thought expresses the Catholic side of the Canadian, and by implication, modern mind. McLuhan’s Catholicism, in fact, provided him with an epistemological strategy that both gave him a privileged vantage-point
on the processed
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world of technology and, in any event, drove him beyond literary studies to an
historical exploration of technological
media as the “dynamic” of modern culture.
The essential aspect of McLuhan’s technological humanism is that he always
remained a Catholic humanist in the Thomistic tradition: one who brought to the
study of technology and culture the more ancient Catholic hope that even in a
world of despair (in our “descent into the maelstrom”**with
Poe’s drowning sailor)
that a way out of the labyrinth could be found by bringing to fruition the “reason”
or “epiphany” of technological society, McLuhan’s thought often recurred to the
sense that there is an immanent moment of “reason” and a possible new human
order in technological society which could be captured on behalf of the preservation
of “civilization.”
Thus, McLuhan was a technological humanist in a special sense. He often
described the modern century as the “age of anxiety”*‘because
of our sudden
exposure, without adequate means of understanding,
to the imploded, instantaneous world of the new information
order. Indeed, in The Medium is the Massage, he
spoke of technology in highly ambivalent terms as, simultaneously,
cohtaining
possibilities for emancipation
and domination.
For McLuhan, a critical humanism,
one which dealt with the “central cultural tendencies”300f the twentieth-century,
had to confront the technological experience in its role as environment,
evolutionary principle, and as second nature itself.
Environments are not passive wrappings, but active processes which
work us over completely, massaging the ratio of the senses and impqsing
their silent assumptions. But environments are invisible. Their groundrules, pervasive structure, and overall patterns elude easy perception.3’
McLuhan’s technological humanism was at the forward edge of a fimdamental “paradigm shift” in human consciousness. When McLuhan spoke of electronic
technology as an extension, or outering, of the central nervous system, he also
meant that modern society had done a “flip.” In order to perceive the “invisible
ground rules” of the technological
media, we have to learn to think in reverse
image: to perceive the subliminal grammar of technology as metaphor, as a
simulacrum or sign-system, silently and pervasively processing human existence.
After all, McLuhan was serious when he described the electric light bulb (all
information,
no content) as a perfect model, almost a precursor, of the highly
mediated world of the “information
society.” McLuhan’s thought was structural,
analogical, and metaphorical
because he sought to disclose the “semiological
reduction”j* at work in the media of communication.
But unlike, for example, the
contemporary
French thinker, Jean Baudrillard, who, influenced deeply by
McLuhan, has teased out the Nietzschean side of the processed world of television,
computers, and binary architecture but whose inquiry has now dissolved into
fatalism, McLuhan was always more optimistic. Because McLuhan, even as he
studied the “maelstrom” of high technology, never deviated from the classical
Catholic project of seeking to recover the basis for a “new universal community”“in
the culture of technology. Unlike Grant or Innis, McLuhan could never be a
nationalist because his Catholicism, with its tradition of civil humanism and its
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95
faith in the immanence of “reason,” committed him to the possibility of the coming
of a universal world culture. In the best of the Catholic tradition, followed out by
Etienne Gilson in philosophy as much as by Pierre Elliott Trudeau in politics,
McLuhan sought a new “incarnation,”
an “epiphany,” by releasing the reason in
technological experience.
Indeed, in a formative essay, “Catholic Humanism,”
McLuhan averred that
he followed Gilson in viewing Catholicism as being directly involved in the “central
cultural discoveries” of the modern age. “Knowledge of the creative process in art,
science, and cognition shows the way to earthly paradise, or complete madness: the
abyss or the top of mount purgatory. “j4 Now McLuhan’s Catholicism was not a
matter of traditional
faith (he was a convert), but of a calculated assessment of the
importance of the Catholic conception of “reason” for interpreting,
and then
civilizing, technological
experience. Over and again in his writings, McLuhan
returned to the’theme that only a sharpening and refocusing of human perception
could provide a way out of the labyrinth of the technostructure.
His ideal value was
that of the “creative process in art; “3sso much so in fact that McLuhan insisted that
if the master struggle of the twentieth century was between reason and irrationality,
then this struggle could only be won if individuals learned anew how to make of
the simple act of “ordinary human perception” an opportunity
for recovering the
creative energies in human experience. McLuhan was a technological humanist of
the blood: his conviction, repeated time and again, was that if we are to recover a
new human possibility it will not be “outside” the technological experience, but
must, of necessity, be “inside” thejeki
of technology. What is really wagered in the
struggle between the opposing tendencies towards domination
and freedom in
technology is that which is most personal, and intimate, to each individual:
the
blinding or revivification
of ordinary human perception. Or, as McLuhan said in
“Catholic Humanism:”
“ . ..the drama of ordinary human perception seen as the
poetic process is the prime analogate, the magic casement opening on the secrets of
created being.“jhAnd,
o f course, for McLuhan the “poetic process” - this recovery of
the method of “sympathetic reconstruction,”
this “recreation” of the technological
experience as a “total communication,”
this recovery of the “rational notes of
beauty, integrity, consonance, and claritas” as the actual stages of human apprehension - was the key to redeeming the technological order.3’If only the mass media
could be harmonized with the “poetic process;” if only the media of communication could be made supportive of the “creative process” in ordinary human perception: then technological society would, finally, be transformed into a wonderful
opportunity
for the “incarnation”
of human experience. But, of course, this meant
that, fully faithful to the Catholic interpretation
of human experience as a working
out of the (immanent)
principle of natural, and then divine, reason, McLuhan
viewed technological society as an incarnation in the making. Unlike the secular ’
discourse of the modern century, McLuhan saw no artificial divisions between
“ordinary human perception” and the technical apparatus of the mass media or, for
that matter, between biology and technology. In this discourse, the supervening
value is reason; and this to such an extent that the creative process of human
perception as well as the technologies of comic books, mass media, photography,
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music, and movies are viewed as relative phases in the working out of a single
process of apprehension.
“. . . The more extensive the mass medium the closer it
must approximate to the character of our cognitive faculties.“3R Or, on a different
note:
As we trace the rise of successive communication channels or links, from
writing to movies and TV it is borne in on us that for their exterior
artifice to be effective it must partake of the character of that interior
.artifice by which in ordinary perception we incarnate the exterior world,
because human perception
is literally incarnation.
So that
must poet the world or fashion it within us as our primary
mode of awareness.39
each of us
and constant
McLuhan’s political value may have been the creation of a universal community of humanity founded on reason, his axiology may have privileged the process of
communication,
and his moral dynamic may have been the “defence of civilization”
from the dance of the irrational; but his ontology, the locus of his world vision, was
the recovery of the “poetic process” as both a method of historical reconstruction
of
the mass media and a “miracle” by which technological society is to be’illuminated,
once again, with meaning.
In ordinary
human perception,
men perform
the miracle of recreating
within themselves
- in their interior
faculties - the exterior
world. This
miracle is the work of the nouspoietikos or of the agent intellect
- that is
the poetic or creative process. The exterior
world in every instant of
perception
is interiorized
and recreated
in a new manner.
Ourselves.
And in this creative work that is perception
and cognition,
we experience immediately
that dance of Being within
our faculties which
provides
the incessant
intuition
of Being!”
The significance of the “poetic process” as the master concept of McLuhan’s
technological
humanism is clear. It is only by creatively interiorizing
(realistically
perceiving) the “external” world of technology, by reabsorbing into the dance of the
intellect mass media as extensions of the cognitive faculties of the human species,
that we can recover “ourselves” anew. It is also individual freedom which is wagered
in McLuhan’s recovery of the “miracle” of ordinary human perception. McLuhan’s
intellectual strategy was not, of course, a matter of quietism. Quite the contrary, the
teasing out of the “epiphany” in external experience meant intense and direct
participation
in the “objects” composing the technostructure.
McLuhan wanted to
seefiom the inside the topography of the technological media which horizon human
experience. His Catholicism, with its central discovery of a “new method of study,”
a new way of seeing technology, fated him to be a superb student of popular
culture. Indeed, McLuhan’s thought could dwell on all aspects of popular culture games, advertisements, radio, television, and detective stories - because he viewed
each of these instances of technological society as somehow “magical;“41 providing
new clues concerning how the technological massage alters the “ratios of the senses”
and novel opportunities
for improved human perception. In much the same way,
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97
but with a different purpose, McLuhan was a practitioner of Northrop Frye’s
“improved binoculars.” Like his favourite symbolist poets, Poe, Joyce, Eliot, and
Baudelaire, McLuhan always worked backwards from effects to cause. Much like
the models of the detective and the artist, he wished to perfect in the method of the
“suspended judgement,“42 in the technique of discovery itself; a new angle of vision on
technological
experience.
McLuhan was, in fact, a dynamic ecologist. He sought a new, internal balance
among technique, imagination
and nature. But his ecological sense was based on a
grim sense of realism. In his view, the “electric age” is the historical period in which
we are doomed to become simultaneously, the “sex of the lifeless machine worW43
or creative participants in a great cycle which turns society back to a new “Finn
cycle.“44
McLuhan always privileged the connection between the immediacy and
simultaneity of electric circuitry and “blind, all-hearing Homer.“45This was a
“humanism”
which wagered itself on a desperate encounter with the “objects” of the
technological order. In Understanding Media, Counter Blast, and The Medium is the
Massage, there emerges an almost cruel description of the technological sensorium
as a sign-system to which the human mind is exteriorized. Electric technology, this
latest sensation of the “genus sensation,” implies that we are now “outered” or
“ablated” into a machine-processed
world of information4”
It is the human destiny
in the modern age to be programmed by an information
order which operates on
the basis of algorithmic
and digital logic, and which, far from conscious human
intervention,
continues to move through the whirring of its own servomechanisms.
Thus, in Understanding Media, McLuhan noted:
By putting our physical bodies inside our extended nervous systems by
means of electric media, we set up a dynamic by which all previous
technologies that ate mere extensions of hands and feet and teeth and
bodily controls - all such extensions of our bodies, including cities will be translated into information systems. Electromagnetic technology
requires utter human docility and quiescence of meditation such as now
befits an organism that wears its brains outside its hide and its nerves
outside its skim4’
And of this “semiological
simply but starkly,
wash” through
the technostructure,
McLuhan
said
Man becomes as it were the sex organ of the machine world, as the bee
of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new
forms. The machine-world reciprocates man’s love by expediting his
wishes and desires, namely by providing him with wealth.48
In McLuhan’s effort to humanize technology through “in-depth participation” there is reopened a more ancient debate in the western mind between the
tragic imagination
and the calculated optimism of the rhetoricians. In his essay, “An
Ancient Quarrel in Modern America,” McLuhan described himself as a “Ciceronian
humanist”4” (better, I suppose, than the early Scottish common-sense realists in
’
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Canada who labeled themselves “Caesars of the wilderness”). McLuhan was a
“Ciceronian
humanist” to this extent: he was, by intellectual habit, an historian of
civilization and a rhetorician. McLuhan’s rhetoric stands, for example, to Grant’s
tragic lament or to Inms’ ’ “marginal man” in much the same way as that earlier
debate between Lucretius and Virgil. Between the rhetorician and the tragic
sensibility, there is always a contest between the attitude of intellectual futility,
tinged by despair, and a pragmatic: will to knowledge, between resigned melancholy
and melancholy resignation.
But if McLuhan brings to bear on technology the skills of a rhetorician’s
imagination,
then he does so as a Catholic, and not Ciceronian, humanist.
McLuban’s mind represents one of the best syntheses yet achieved of the Catholic
legacy as this was developed in Aquinas, Joyce, and Eliot. In a largely unremarked,
but decisive, article - “Joyce, Aquinas and the Poetic Process” - McLuhan was
explicit that his epistemologicalstrategy
for the study of technology was modeled on
Aquinas’ method of the respondeo dicendum: the tracing and retracing of thought
through the “cubist landscape” of the Thomistic article.5O McLuhan said of Aquinas
that in his ‘method of thought” we see the fully modern mind at work. In Aquinas,
as later in Joyce, there is the constant use of the “labyrinth figure” as the archetype
of human cognition. “Whereas the total shape of each article, with its,trinal
divisions into objections, respondeo, and answers to objections, is an ‘S’ labyrinth,
this figure is really traced and retraced by the mind many times in the course of a
single article.“5’ Aquinas’ central contribution
to modern discourse was this: his
“method” of study gave a new brilliance of expression to the “technique of discovery” as the locus of the modern mind.
His ‘articles’ can be regarded as vivisections of the mind in act. The skill
and wit with which he selects his objections constitute a cubist landscape, an ideal landscape of great intellectual extent seen from an
airplane. The ideas or objects in this landscape are by their very
contiguity set in a dramatic state of tension; and this dramatic tension is
provided with a dramatic peripetieia in the respondeo, and with a
resolution in the answers to the objections.52
Now, the significance of McLuhan’s recovery of Aquinas’ method of the
“respondeo dicendum” is that this method is almost perfectly autobiographical
of
McLuhan’s own strategy for the study of technological
experience. Long before
McLuhan in, for example, The Medium is the Massage, discussed the creation of a
“cubist landscape” as a counter-gradient
for understanding
technological
media or
in The Mechanical Bride appealed for the need to sharpen “perception,”
he had
already adopted the “Catholic method,” and Joyce’s adaptation of Aquinas’ “article”
as his main epistemological
tools for “understanding
media.” Indeed, it was
McLuhan’s achievement, fully faithful to the spirit of Joyce’s writings in Ubsses,
Dubliners, and The Portrait, to translate the Thomistic analysis of cognition,
“namely the fact of the creative process as the natural process of apprehension,
arrested and retraced,“53 into a powerful intellectual procedure for grasping the
inner movement in even the most prosaic objects of popular culture. “Ordinary
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experience is a riot of imprecision, of impressions enmeshed in preconceptions,
cliches, profanities, and impercipience.
But for the true artist every experience is
capable of an epiphany.“54 McLuhan may have lived with the grimly pessimistic
knowledge that we had become the “sex organs of the machine world,” but his
intellectual spirit was optimistic, and indeed combative. In the following passage,
McLuhan is speaking of Joyce in relationship to Aquinas, but he might well have
been writing his own intellectual notice. Like Joyce, and for the same reason, he
always preferred “comic to tragic art;“55 his conclusions may have been downbeat,
but his “method” was distinctly upbeat. McLuhan’s very psychology was like a
counter-gradient
flailing against the technostructure;
this in full awareness that the
“technological
massage” worked us over, not from outside, but from within. The
“minotaurs”
to be overcome in “understanding
media” were also fully interiorizeu’
within the human mind and body.
,
Any movement of appetite within the labyrinth of cognition is a
‘minotaur’ which must be slain by the hero artist. Anyrhing which
interferes with cognition, whether concupiscence, pride, imprecision, or
vagueness is a minotaur ready to devour beauty. So that Joyce not only
was the first to reveal the link berween the stages of apprehension and
the creative process, he was the first to understand how the drama of
cognition itself was the key archetype of all human ritual myth and
legend. And thus he was able to incorporate at every point in his work
the body of the past in immediate relation to the slightest current of
perception.5G
McLuhan shared with Grant, and Nietzsche, a deep understanding
of
“technique as ourselves,” of our envelopment in the historical dynamic of technological media. But he differed from them, and consequently from the “lament” of
the Protestant mind, both by subscribing to the value of “creative freedom,” and by
providing a precise intellectual itinerary through which the “creative process” might
be generalized in human experience.
In McLuhan’s terms, everything now depends on the creation of an inner
harmony, a concordance of the beauty of reason, between the “imprecision
of
ordinary experience” and the “cognitive power in act.” This is just to note, though,
exactly how central McLuhan’s religious sensibility (his Catholic roots) was to his
interpretation
of technology. It was, in the end, from Joyce and Aquinas that he
took an intellectual strategy for the exploration of technological experience: the
the privileging of the perception of the true
method of “suspended judgment;”
artist in battle with the minotaurs which block the possible epiphany in every
experience, the technique of reconstruction
as discovery; a singular preference for
the comic over the tragic; the abandonment
of narrative in favour of the “analogical
juxtaposition
of character, scene, and situation. “57Like other advocates of Catholic
humanism in the twentieth-century,
McLuhan was neither an impressionist nor an
expressionist, but one who stood by the “method of the profoundly
analogical
drama of existence as it is mirrored in the cognitive power in act.“58 For McLuhan,
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the recovery of reason in technological experience was always part of a broader
religious drama: what was also at stake in the contest with the minotaurs in the
labyrinth of technology was individual redemption.
Tracking
Technology
II: Experimental
Medicine
McLuhan often recurred in his writings to Poe’s figure of the “drowning
sailor” who, trapped in the whirlpool without a visible means of escape, studied his
situation with “calm detachment” in order to discover some thread which might
lead out of the labyrinth.59While
the Catholic touch in McLuhan’s thought provided him with the necessary sense of critical detachment and, moreover, with the
transcendent value of creative freedom; it was the particular genius of his discourse
that he managed to combine an intellectual sensibility which was essentially
Thomistic with the more ancient practice of exploring the crisis of technological
society within the terms of experimental medicine. In McLuhan’s inquiry, there is
rehearsed time and again a classically medical approach to understanding
technology: an approach which, while it may be traced-directly to Hippocrates’ Ancient
Medicine, also has its origins in Thucydides’ method of historical writing. Very
much in the tradition of Hippocrates, and then Thucydides, McLuhan’s historical
study of the media of communication
was structured by the three moments of
semiology (classification of symptoms), diagnosis and therapeutics.“” Indeed, it
might even be said that McLuhan’s adoption of the three stages of the Thomistic
“article” - objections, respondeo, and answers to objections - was only a modern
variation of the more classical method of experimental medicine. In both instances,’
the historical experience under interrogation
is “recreated in depth,” with special
emphasis placed on the historian (the cultural historian as doctor to a sick society)
as a“‘vivisectionist”
of the whole field of experience.6’When
McLuhan recommended repeatedly that the cultural historian “trace and retrace” the field of
technological
experience, both as a means of understanding
the “closure” effected
upon human perspective and as a way of discovering an escape-hatch, he was only
restating, in distinctly modern language, the experimental
method of ancient
medicine. McLuhan’s imagination
always played at the interface of biology and
technology. His discourse took as its tiorking premise that the most insidious effect
of technology lay in its deep colonization
of biology, of the body itself; and,
moreover, in its implicit claim, that technology is the new locus of the evolutionary
principle. For McLuhan the technological
“sensorium” was precisely that: an
artificial amplification,
and transferal, of human consciousness and sensory organs
to the technical apparatus, which now, having achieved the electronic phase of
“simultaneity”
and “instantaneous
scope, ” returns to take its due on the human
body.h2The “sensorium” presents itself to a humanity which has already passed over
into “deep shock” over the inexplicable consequences of electronics as a practical
simulation of evolution, of the biological process itself. This circling back of the
technological
sensorium, this silent merger of technology and biology, is the
cataclysmic change in human history that so disturbed McLuhan. His discourse on
technology begins and ends with an exploration of the “possession” of biology by
the technological imperative. Indeed, in McLuhan’s estimation, technology works
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its effects upon biology much like a disease. It is also the tools of a doctor which are
needed both for an accurate diagnosis of the causes of the disease, and for a prognosis of some cure which might be recuperative of the human sensibility in technological society.
One pervasive theme running through McLuhan’s writings has to do with the
double-effect of the technological experience in “wounding”
the human persona by
effecting a “closure” of human perception, and in “numbing”
and thus “neutralizing” the area under stress. h31t was McLuhan’s melancholic observation that when
confronted with new technologies, the population
passes through, and this repeatedly, the normal cycle of shock: “alarm” at the disturbances occasioned by the
introduction,
often on a massive scale, of new extensions of the sensory organs;
“resistance” which is typifically directed at the “content” of new technological
innovations (McLuhan’s point was, of course, that the content of a new technology
is only the already passe history of a superseded technology); and “exhaustion” in
the face of our inability to understand the subliminal (formal) consequences of
fundamental
changes in the technostructure. 64It was his dour conclusion that, when
confronted with the “paradigm-shift”
typified by the transformation
of technology
from a mechanical, industrial model to an electronic one, the-population
rapidly
enters into a permanent state of exhaustion and bewilderment.
In McLuhan’s terms,
the present century is characterized by an almost total unconsciousness of the real
effects of the technological
media. “The new media are blowing a lot of baby
powder around the pendant cradle of the NEW MAN today. The dust gets in our
eyes.“65
It was a source of great anxiety to McLuhan that electronic technologies, with
their abrupt reversal of the structural laws of social and non-social evolution, had
(without human consent or even social awareness) precipitated a new, almost
autonomous,
technical imperative in human experience.h6 In Counter Blact,
McLuhan had this to say of the new technological imperative:
Throughout previous evolution, we have protected the cenrral nervous
system by outering this or that physical organ in tools, housing,
clothing, cities. But each outering of individual organs was also an
acceleration and intensification of the general environment until the
central nervous system did a flip. We turned turtle. The shell went
inside, the organs outside. Turtles with soft shells become vicious. That’s
our present state.67
A society of “vicious turtles” is also one in which technology works its
“biological effects” in the language of stress. For McLuhan, the advent of electronic
technology creates a collective sense of deep distress, precisely because this
“outering” of the central nervous system induces an unprecedented
level of stress on
the individual organism. The “technological
massage” reworks human biology and
the social psyche at a deep, subliminal level. Having grasped the essential connection between technology and stress, it was not surprising that so much of
McLuhan’s discourse on technology was influenced by Hans Selye’s pioneering work
in the field of stress. Indeed, McLuhan adopted directly from Selye’s research a
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I
medical understanding
of the relationship between stress and numbness. A central
theme in McLuhan’s reflection on bio-technology
was Selye’s original theorisation
that under conditions of deep stress, the organism anesthetizes the area effected,
making the shock felt in peripheral regions. And McLuhan always insisted that the
age of electric circuity is a time of HIGH STRESS.
When an organ goes out (ablation) it goes numb. The central nervous
system has gone numb (for survival). We enter the age of the uncon;
scious with electronics, and consciousness shifts to the physical organs,
even in the body politic. There is a great stepping up of physical
awareness and a big drop in mental awareness when the central nervous
system goes outward.68
Or again, and this in Counter Blast, although
very beginning of Understanding Media:
the same theme is also at the
The one area which is numb and unconscious is the area which receives
the impact. Thus there is an exact parallel with ablation in experimental
medicine but in medical ablation, observation is properly directed not to
the numb area, but to all the other organs as they are affected by the
numbing or ablation of the single organ.69
It was McLuhan’s overall project (his semiology) to probe the numbing of
human perception by the technological innovations of the electronic age. In much
the same way that McLuhan said of the movement from speech to writing that it
illuminated
the “high, dim Sierras of speech,” McLuhan’s “medical” understanding
of technology lit up the darkness surrounding
the invisible environment
of the
forms (rhetoric) of technology. All of McLuhan’s writings are, in fact, a highly
original effort at casting iron filings across the invisible “field” of electronic technologies in an effort to highlight their tacit assumptions. McLuhan’s intention was
to break the seduction effect of technology, to disturb the hypnotic spell cast by the
dynamism of the technological imperative. And thus, while he was in the habit of
saying, about the “inclusive” circuitry of the electronic age, that it was composed of
“code, language, mechanical medium - all (having) magical properties which
transform, transfigure,“‘O he was also accustomed to note that, on the down-side of
the “new age,” its participants were daily “X-rayed by television images.“”
McLuhan could be so ambivalent on the legacy of the technological
experience because, following Hans Selye and Adolphe Jonas, he viewed technological
media as simultaneously extensions and auto-amputations
of the sensory organs. The
paradoxical character of technological
media as both amplifications
and cancellations was, of course, one basic theme of Understanding Media.
While it was no part of the intention of Jonas and Selye to provide an
explanation of human invention and technology, they have given us a
theory of disease (discomfort) that goes far to explain why man is
impelled to extend various parts of his body by a kind of auto-arnputation.”
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It was McLuhan’s special insight though, to recognize the deep relationship
between the history of technological innovation and the theory of disease.
McLuhan’s historical account of the evolution of technological
media was structured around a (medical) account of technological innovation as “counter-irritants”
to the “stress of acceleration of pace and increase of load.“73 Just as the body (in
Hans Selye’s terms) resorts to an auto-amputative
strategy when “the perceptual
power cannot locate or avoid the cause of irritation,”
so too (in McLuhan’s terms)
in the stress of super-stimulation,
“the central nervous system acts to protect itself
by a strategy of amputation or isolation of the offending organ, sense, or function.“74Technology
is a “counter-irritant”
which aids in the “equilibrium
of the
physical organs which protect the central nervous system.“75 Thus, the wheel (as an
extension of the foot) is a counter-irritant
against the sudden pressure of “new
burdens resulting from the acceleration of exchange by written and monetary
media;” “ movies and TV complete the cycle of mechanization
of the human
sensorium;” and computers are ablations or outerings of the human brain itseK7”
Now, it was McLuhan’s thesis that the motive-force for technological
innovation
was always defensive and biological: the protection of the central nervous system
against sudden changes in the “stimulus” of the external environment.
Indeed,
McLuhan often noted that “the function of the body” was the maintenance of an
equilibrium
among the media of our sensory organs. And consequently, the
electronic age is all the more dangerous, and, in fact, suicidal when “in a desperate... autoamputation,
as if the central nervous system could no longer depend on
the physical organs to be protective buffers against the slings and arrows of outrageous mechanism, “77the central nervous system itself is outered in the form of
electric circuitry. McLuhan inquires, again and again, what is to be the human fate
now that with the “extension of consciousness” we have put “one’s nerves outside,
and one’s physical organs inside the nervous system, or brain.“7RFor McLuhan, the
modern century is typified by an information
order which plays our nerves in
public: a situation, in his estimation, of “dread.”
It was in an equally desperate gamble at increasing popular awareness of the
“flip” done to us by the age of electric circuitry that McLuhan undertook an
essentially medical survey of technological society. McLuhan’s “classification of
symptoms” took the form of an elaborate and historical description of the evolution
of technology from the “mechanical” extensions of man (wheels, tools, printing) to
the mythic, inclusive technologies of the electric age (television, movies, computers,
telephone, phonograph).
His “diagnosis” was that the crisis induced by technological society had much to do with the “closures” (numbing)
effected among the sense
ratios by new technical inventions. McLuhan was explicit about the technological
origins of the modern stress syndrome: “the outering or extension of our bodies and
senses in a new invention compels the whole of our bodies and senses to shift into
new positions in order to maintain equilibrium.“7’A
new “closure” is occasioned in
our sensory organs and faculties, both private and public, by new technical extenthe deployment of the “creative
sion of man. And McLuhan’s “therapeutic:”
imagination”
as a new way of seeing technology, and of responding, mythically and
in depth, to the challenges of the age of electric circuitry. For McLuhan, the stress
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syndrome associated with the coming-to-be
of the technostructure
could only be
met with the assistance of educated perspective. If it is the human fate to live within
its (own) central nervous system in the form of the electronic simulation of consciousness, then it is also the human challenge to respond creatively to the “dread”
and “anxiety” of the modern age. We may be the servomechanisms, the body bits,
of a technical apparatus which substitutes a language of codes, of processed information, for “natural” experience, but this is a human experience which is doubleedged. Without the education of perspective or, for that matter, in the absence of a
“multidimensional
perspective”80 on technique, it will surely be the human destiny
to be imprinted
by the structural imperatives, the silent grammar, of the new world
information
order. But it was also McLuhan’s hope, occasioned by his faith in the
universality of reason that the electronic age could be transformed in the direction
of creative freedom. After all, it was his over-arching thesis that the era of electric
circuitry represented a great break-point in human experience: the end of “visual,
uniform culture”8’ based on mechanical technologies, and the ushering in of a
popular culture of the “new man,” which would be fully tribal and organic. In all
his texts, but particularly in The Medium is the Massage, McLuhan insisted on
teasing out the emancipatory
tendencies in new technologies. Against the blandishments of an “off&l
culture” to imp’ose old meanings on novel technologies,
McLuhan sympathized with “anti-social perspectives:” the creative perspectives of
the artist, the poet, and even the young, who respond with “untaught delight to the
poetry, and the beauty of the new technological environment.“**
In his intellectual
commitment
to the development of a new perspective on technology, McLuhan
was, of course, only following Joyce in his willingness to respond to the technological environment
with a sense of its “creative process.” “He (Joyce) saw that the wake
of human progress can disappear again into the night of sacral or auditory man.
The Finn cycle of tribal institutions can return in the electric age, but if again, then
let’s make it awake or a wake or both.“83An yway in McLuhanS world, in a society
which has sound as its environment,
we have no choice. “We simply are not
equipped with earlids.“**
M&&n’s
Blindspots
McLuhan was the last and best exponent of the liberal imagination
in
Canadian letters. His thought brings to a new threshold of intellectual expression
the fascination with the question of technology which has always, both in political
and private practice, so intrigued liberal discourse in Canada. McLuhan’s thought
provides a new eloquence, and indeed, nobility of meaning to “creative freedom” as
a worthwhile
public value; and this as much as it reasserts the importance of a
renewed sense of “individualism,”
both as the locus of a revived political community and as a creative site (the “agent intellect”) for releasing, again and again, the
possible “epiphanies”
in technological experience. In McLuhan’s writings, the
traditional liberal faith in the reason of technological experience, a reason which
could be the basis of a rational and universal political community, was all the more
ennobled to the extent that the search for the “reason” in technology was combined
with the Catholic quest for a new “incarnation.”
McLuhan’s communication
theory
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was a direct outgrowth of his Catholicism; and his religious sensibility fused
perfectly with a classically liberal perspective on the question of technology and
civilization. In the present orthodoxy of intellectual discourse, it is not customary to
find a thinker whose inquiry is both infused by a transcendent religious sensibility
and whose intellectual scholarship is motivated, not only by a desperate sense of the
eclipse of reason in modern society, but by the disappearance of “civilization”
itself
through its own vanishing-point.
As quixotic as it might be, McLuhan’s intellectual
project was of such an inclusive and all-embracing nature. His thought could be
liberal, Catholic, and structuralist (before his time) precisely because the gravitation-point
of McLuhan’s thought was the preservation of the fullest degree possible
of creative freedom in a modern century, which, due to the stress induced by its
technology, was under a constant state of emergency. In McLuhan’s discourse,
individual
freedom as well as civil culture itself were wagered in the contest with
technology. The technological
experience also made the possibility of a new
“incarnation”
fully ambivalent: it was also the Catholic, and by extension, liberal
belief in a progressive, rational, and evolutionary history which was gambled in the
discourse on technology.
But if McLuhan provides an important key to exploring the technological
media, then it must also be noted that there are, at least, two major limitations in
his thought which reduce his value, either as a guide to understanding
technology
in the Canadian circumstance or, for that matter, to a full inquiry into the meaning
of the technological
experience in the New World. First, McLuhan had no systematic, or even eclectic, theory of the relationship between economy and technology;
and certainly no critical appreciation of the appropriation,
and thus privatisation,
of
technology by the lead institutions, multinational
corporations and the state, in
advanced industrial societies. It was not, of course, that McLuhan was unaware of
the relationship of corporate power and technology. One searing sub-text of
Understanding Media and The Mechanical Bride had to do with the almost mahgnant significance of the corporate control of electronic technologies. In McLuhan’s
estimation, “technology is part of our bodies;“85 and to the extent that corporations
acquire private control over the electronic media then we have, in effect, “leased
out” our eyes, ears, fingers, legs, and the brain itself, to an exterior power.“” In the
electronic age, this era of collective and integral consciousness, those with control of
technological
media are allowed “to play the strings of our nerves in public.““‘The
body is fully externalized, and exposed, in the interstices of the technological
sensorium. For McLuhan, just like Grant, the technological dynamo breeds a new
formation of power, demonic and mythic, which is capable, as one of its reflexes of
vapourizing the individual subject, and of undermining
all “public” communities.
But if McLuhan understood the full dangers of corporate control of technological
media, nowhere did he extend this insight into a reflection on the relationship of
capitalism and technology. Now, it may be, as in the case of Jacques Ellul, another
civil humanist, that McLuhan’s intellectual preference was to privilege the question
of technology over all other aspects of social experience, including the economic
foundations of society. McLuhan may have been a technological
determinist, or at
the minimum, a “technological
monist” who took technique to be the primary
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locus for the interpretation
of society as a whole. If this was so, then it is particularly unfortunate since McLuhan’s “blindspot”
on the question of capitalism and
technology undermined,
in the end, his own injunction
for an “historical understanding” of the evolution of technological media. In “Catholic Humanism”
and,
for, that matter, in all of his writings, McLuhan urged the use of the historical
imagination
- an historical perspective which was to be sympathetic, realistic, and.
reconstructive - as our only way of understanding
the great watershed in human
experience precipitated by the appearance of electronic society. His was, however, a
curious and somewhat constricted vision of the historical imagination:
for it
omitted any analysis of the precise historical conditions surrounding
the development of the technological
experience in North America. McLuhan was as insensitive, and indifferent, to the problem of the political economy of technology as he
was to the relationship of technology and ideological hegemony in the creation of
liberal society, and the liberal state, in North America. McLuhan’s primary value
was, of course, creative freedom, not “justice;” and his political preference was for a
universal community
founded on the rights of “reason,” not for the “ethic of
charity.” This is to say, however, that McLuhan’s “historical sense” already embraced, from its very beginnings, the deepest assumptions of technological society.
McLuhan’s mind was a magisterial account of the technological imagination
itself.
This was a discourse which evinced a fatal fascination with the utopian possibilities
of technology, Indeed, McLuhan liked to speculate about the almost religious
utopia immanent in the age of information.
Language as the technology of human extension, whose powers of
division and separation we know so well, may have been the “Tower of
Babel” by which men sought to scale the highest heavens. Today
computers hold out the promise of a means of instant translation of any
code or language into any other’code or language. The computer, in
short, promises by technology a Pentecostal condition of universal
understanding and unity. The next logical step would seem to be, not to
translate, but to by-pass languages in favour of a general cosmic
consciousness which might be very like the collective unconscious
dreamt by Bergson. The condition of “weightlessness” that biologists say
promises a physical immortality, may be paralleled by the condition of
speechlessness that could confer a perpetuity of collective harmony and
peace.R8
Everything in McLuhan’s thought strained towards the liberation of the
“Pentecostal condition”
of technology: the privileging of space over time; the
fascination with the exteriorisation
in electronic technology of an “inner experience” which is electric, mythic, inclusive, and configurational;
the primacy of
“field” over event; the vision of “processed information”
as somehow consonant
with the perfectibility
of the human faculties. And it was this utopian, and transcendent, strain in McLuhan’s thought which may, perhaps, have made it impossible for his inquiry to embrace the problematic of capitalism and technology. In
McLuhan’s lexicon, the privileging
of the “economic” relationship belonged to an
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obsolete era: the now superseded age of specialism, fragmentation,
and segmentation of work of the industrial revolution. McLuhan viewed himself as living on the
other side, the far side, of technological history: the coming age of “cosmic man”
typified by “mythic or iconic awareness” and by the substitution of the “multifaceted for the point-of-view.“*’
What was capitalism? It was the obsolescent content
of the new era of the electronic simulation of consciousness. For McLuhan,
economy had also gone electronic and thus even the corporate world, with its
“magic” of advertisements and its plenitude of computers, could be subsumed into
the more general project of surfacing the reason in technological society. Consequently, it might be said that McLuhan’s blindspot on the question of economy was
due not so much to a strain of “technological
determinism”
in his thought, and least
not in thejrst instance; but due rather to his, transparently Catholic expectation
that if the electronic economy of the corporate world was not an “agent intellect” in
the creation of a new technological horizon, it was, at least, a necessary catalyst in
setting the conditions for “cosmic man.” McLuhan was a “missionary” to the power
centres of the technological experience; and he could so faithfully, and guilelessly,
discuss the civilizing moment in technology because there never was any incompatibility between the Catholic foundations of his communication
theory and the will
to empire. If McLuhan was a deeply compromised thinker, then it was because his
Catholic humanism allowed him to subordinate, and forget the question of the
private appropriation
of technology. And what was, in the final instance, tragic and
not comic about his intellectual fate was simply this: it was precisely the control
over the speed, dissemination, and implanting of new technologies by the corporate
command centres of North America which would subvert the very possibility of an
age of “creative freedom.”
If one limitation
in McLuhan’s discourse on technology was his forgetfulness
of the mediation of technology by political economy, then a second limitation, or
arrest, concerned McLuhan’s contempt for the “national question” in Canada. It
would be unfair to criticize a thinker for not violating the internal unity of his own
viewpoint. McLuhan was always firm in his belief that the da&n of the “global
village,” this new era of “universal understanding
and unity” required the by-passing
of “national” political communities. The universalism of reason and the potentially
new “Finn cycle” of an all-inclusive and mythic technological experience rendered
obsoleteparticularistic
political concerns. McLuhan’s polis was the world; and his,
not inaccurate, understanding
of that world had it that the United States, by virtue
of its leadership in electronic technologies, was the “new world environment.““‘It
was, consequently, with a noble conscience that McLuhan, like Galbraith, Easton,
and Johnson before him, could turn his attention southward, passing easily and
with no sign of disaffection, into the intellectual centres of the American empire.
And, of course, in prophesying the end of nationalist sensibility, or the more
regional sense of a “love of one’s own,” McLuhan was only following the flight
beyond “romanticism”
of the liberal political leadership of Canada, and, in particular, the “creative leadership” ofTrudeau. Indeed, that Trudeau could so instantly
and enthusiastically
embrace McLuhan’s world sensibility was only because the
latter’s sense of an underlying reason in the technological order confirmed the
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deepest prejudices of Trudeau’s own political perspective. Indeed, between Trudeau
and McLuhan a parallel project was in the making: on Trudeau’s part (Federalism
and the French-Canadiam)
a political challenge against the “obsolete” world of
ethnicity (and thus nationalism) in Quebec and an invitation to Quebec to join the
technological
(rational) society of North America; and on McLuhan’s part, an
epistemological
and then moral decision to join in the feast of corporate advantages
spread out by the masters of the empire. The common trajectories traced by
Trudeau’s technocratic politics and by McLuhan’s sense of technological
utopia
reveals and powerfully so, the importance of the Catholic touch in Canadian
politics and letters; just as much as it reflects, that for the empire at least, Catholicism is, indeed, intimate with the “central cultural discoveries” of the modern age.
Moreover, the very existence of a “McLuhan”
or a “Trudeau” as the locus of the
Canadian discourse discloses the indelible character of Canada, not just as a witness
to empire, but, perhaps, as a radical experiment in the working out of the intellectual and political basis of the technological
imagination
in North America. Canada
is, and has always been, the most modern of the New World societies; because the
character of its colonialism, of its domination
of the land by technologies of
communication,
and of its imposition of an “abstract nation” upon a divergent
population
by a fully technological polity, has made of it a leading expression of
technological
liberalism in North America.
It was, consequently, the fate of McLuhan to be welcomed into the privileged
circles of the corporate and intellectual elites of the United States. This was not
unanticipated.
The Canadian philosopher, Charles Norris Cochrane, noted that it is
the peculiar feature of imperialisms that, as their energies focus, in the most mature
phase of empire, on the “pragmatic will” to conquer, to expand, to live, they are
often forced to seek out in the peripheral regions of the empire some new source of
intellectual energy, some inspiring historical justification,
which would counter the
dawning sense of “intellectual
futility” that so often accompanies, and undermines,
the greatest successes of the will to enlpire.9’ McLuhan was such an “historical
energizer.” His utopian vision of technological society provided the corporate
leadership of the American empire with a sense of historical destiny; and, at least,
with the passing illusion that their narrow-minded
concentration
on the “business”
of technology might make of them the “Atlas” of the new world of cosmic man. It
was McLuhan’s special ability, done, no doubt, sometimes tongue in cheek and with
a proper sense of intellectual cynicism, to transfigure the grubby leadership (Grant’s
“creative leaders”) of the American business world, and then of a good part of the
new class of technocrats in the West, into the dizzying heights of a greater historical
destiny, that made him such a favoured courtesan of the technological
empire.
Grant might say of the “creative leaders” of empire that their nihilism is such that
they would always prefer to will rather than not to will, but McLuhan provided
another, more radical, alternative. In the face of the incipient nihilism of the
technological
experience, McLuhan dangled that most precious of gifts: a sense of
historical purpose (the age of communications
as “cosmic consciousness”); and an
intellectual justification
(the technological imperative as both necessary andgood).
Digital
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109
While Grant’s austere and forbidding
description of technological
dependency revolved around a consideration of technique a~ will, McLuhan thought of
technique as possessing, at least potentially, the poetry of consciousness. Thus, it was
not with bad faith but with the curious amorality of a thinker whose ethic, being as
it was abstract freedom and reason, and who could thus screen out the barbarism of
the technological
dynamo, that McLuhan could associate with the leadership of
technological society. And just to the extent that Grant’s ruminations
on technological society led him into almost self-imposed solitude in Halifax (far from the
“dynamic centre” of the technological dynamo in the Great Lakes region of North
America), McLuhan could be a dandy of the New York intelligentsia.
McLuhan’s
association of the values of reason and “universal unity” with the expansive momentum of the technostructure
was, of course, a highly fortuitous compromise. It
allowed him to serve a legitimation
function for the technological
dynamo, while all
the while maintaining
his sang-fioid as a civil humanist who was above the fray, a
Catholic intellectual among the barbarians.
McLuhan’s political commitments, represented both by his rejection of the
“national question” in Canada and by his participation,
in depth, in the futurology
of technological
empire, are of direct consequence to his contributions
to a master
theory of communications.
That McLuhan could find no moment of deviation
between his civil humanism, founded on the defence of “civilization,”
and his
absorption into the intellectual appendages of empire, indicates, starkly and
dramatically, precisely how inert and uncritical. is the supervening value of “civilization.” McLuhan’s lasting legacy is, perhaps, a historical one: the inherent contradiction of his discourse in remaining committed to the very technostructure
which had
destroyed the possibility of “civilization”
indicates the ultimate failure of civil
humanism in modern politics. McLuhan’s humanism, and indeed his abiding
Catholicism, could provide an inspiring vision of a more utopian human future;
but in remaining tied to the,“primacy of reason,” a reason which was fully abstracted
from history and ontology, McLuhan’s discourse could always be easily turned from
within. This was the comic aspect of the whole affair: the technological dynamo
could also accept as its dominant value the “primacy of reason”; and, by extension,
the application of technical reason, in politics, bureaucracy, science, and industry, to
the proliferation
of technological media. The technostructure
thus absorbed
McLuhan’s discourse on his own terms: it transposed his search for a new, universal
civilization into an historical justification of technological necessitarianism; and it
showed precisely how compatible the Catholic conception of “transcendent reason”
is with the rationalising
impulses of the technological system. McLuhan’s one
possible avenue of escape: the recovery of a “grounded” and emergent cultural
practice or, at least, some sense of “intimations
of deprival” which had been silenced
by the technological dynamo was, of course, firmly closed to him by his commitment to the universal over the local, and to the metaphorical over the historical.
To dismiss McLuhan as a technological determinist is to miss entirely the
point of his intellectual contribution.
McLuhan’s value as a theorist of culture and
technology began just when he went over the hill to the side of the alien and
surrealistic world of mass communications:
the “real world” of technology where
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the nervous system is exteriorised and everyone is videoated daily like sitting screens
for television, Just because McLuhan sought to see the real world of technology, and
even to celebrate technological
reason as freedom, he could provide such superb,
first-hand accounts of the new society of electronic technologies. McLuhan was
fated to be trapped in the deterministic world of technology, indeed to become one
of the intellectual servomechanisms of the machine-world,
because his Catholicism
failed to provide him with an adequate cultural theory by which to escape the
hegemony of the abstract media systems that he had sought to explore. Paradoxically, however, it was just when McLuhan became most cynical and most deterministic, when he became fully aware of the nightmarish quality of the “medium as
massage, ” that his thought becomes most important as an entirely creative account
of the great paradigm-shift
now going on in twentieth-century
experience.
McLuhan was then, in the end, trapped in the “figure” of his own making. His
discourse could provide a brilliant understanding
of the inner functioning
of the
technological
media; but no illumination
concerning how “creative freedom” might
be won through in the “age of anxiety, and dread.” In a fully tragic sense,
McLuhan’s final legacy was this: he was the playful perpetrator, and then victim, of
a sign-crime.“*
Digital
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111
Notes
1. M . McLuhan, Counter Blast, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969, p. 14.
2. For McLuhan’s extended analysis of the movie as a “mechanizing” medium see “The Reel
World,” Understanding
Media, pp. 284-296.
3. McLuhan also described the telegraph as a “social hormone,” G&standing
Media, pp.
246-257.
4. M. McLuhan, Counter Bht, p. 16.
5. M. McLuhan, The Medium
is the Mmstge,
p. 26.
6. M. McLuhan, Counter Blast, p. 14.
7. Ibid., p. 31.
8. Ibid., p. 30.
9. Ibid., p. 26.
10. Ibid., p. 41.
11. Ibid., p. 14.
12. Ibid., pp. 22-23.
13. M. McLuhan, Understanding
Media, p. 51.
14. M. McLuhan, “A Historical Approach to the Media,” Teacher? College Record, 57(2),
November, 1955, p. 110.
15. Ibid., p. 109.
16. Ibid., p.110.
17. M. McLuhan, Through the Vanishing Point: Space in Poetry and Painting, New York:
Harper and Row, 1968, p. 181.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., pp. 24-25.
20. Ibid., p. 24.
21. Ibid., p. 25.
22. Ibid., p. 24.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., p. 181.
25. The arts as “radar feedback” is a major theme of Understanding
Media. See particularly
the introductory comments, pp. vii-xi.
26. M. McLuhan, Through the Ihnishing Point, p. 21.
27. M. McLuhan, Counter Bht, p. 31.
28. See particularly, M. McLuhan, The Mechanical
Bride: Folklore of Industrial
Man, New
York: The Vanguard Press, 195 1.
29. McLuhan wrote in Understanding
Media, “To put one’s nerves outside, and one’s physical
organs inside the nervous system, or brain, is to initiate a situation - if not a concept - of
dread.” p. 222.
30. McLuhan’s most expansive statement on the relationship of the Catholic mind to the
study of modern civilization is located in his article, “Catholic Humanism & Modern
Letters.”
3 1. M. McLuhan, The Medium
is the Massage, p. 68.
32. Jean Baudrillard, L’hchange ymbofique
et la morf, Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1976, pp. 8995.
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33. McLuhan’s sense of communications as a new universahsm is a unifying theme across his
texts, from The Medium is the Ma.qge to Unabstanding
Media and Counter Blast. It was
also a Catholic ethic which was at work in his thought about the media.
34. M. McLuhan, “Catholic Humanism and Modern Letters,” p. 75.
35. Ibid., p. 74.
36. Ibid., p. 80.
37. Ibid., pp. 75-76.
38. Ibid., p. 75.
39. Ibid., pp. 82-83.
40. Ibid., p. 80.
41. Indeed, McLuhan describes the “new media” of communication (...a~...) magical art
forms, “Catholic Humanism and Modern Letters,” p. 79.
is the Marsage, p. 69.
43. M. McLuhan, Unakrstanding
Media. p. 56.
45. Ibid., p, I 14.
46. See particularly, M. McLuhan, Counter Bkzst, p. 42.
Media, p. 64.
48. Ibid., p. 56.
49. M. McLuhan, “An Ancient Quarrel in Modern America” in The Interior Lam&cape: The
Literary
Criticism
ofMarshal[McLuhan,
1743-62,
edited by Eugene McNatnara. Toronto:
McGraw-Hill, 1969, p. 23 1.
50. M. McLuhan, “Joyce, Aquinas, and the Poetic Process,” Renascence4(l), Autumn, 195 1,
pp. 3-4.
51. Ibid., p. 3.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., p. 7.
54. Ibid., p. 4.
55. Ibid., p. 5.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid., p. 9.
58. Ibid., p. 8.
‘59. M. McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage, p. 15 1.
60. For an illuminating account of the significance ofThucydides’ epistemology to modern
consciousness, see Charles Cochrane, Thucydsihs and the Science of History, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1929.
61. See particularly, M. McLuhan’s “Joyce, Aquinas and the Poetic Process,” p. 3, and
“Catholic Humanism and Modern Letters,” p.72.
62. McLuhan’s understanding of the creative possibilities of “simultaneity” and “instantaneous scope” is developed in The Medium is the Marsage.
63. While McLuhan anaIyz.esthe phenomenon of “closure” in many of his writings, this
concept is the locus of Counter Bht and Uridrrstanding
Media.
Media, p. 26.
65. M. McLuhan, Counter Bkzst, p. 5.
66. Ibid., p. 42.
Digital
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
8 1.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
Delirium
113
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 62.
M. M&h,
Understanding
Media.
Ibid., p. 42.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 43.
See particularly,
M. McLuhan,
Understanding
Media, p. 42, and Counter Blast, p. 17.
M. McLuhan,
Unahtanding
Media, p. 43.
Ibid., p. 252.
Ibid.
Ibid., p, 142.
McLuhan
always counterposed
the mythic,
inclusive
and in-depth
viewpoint
to the
homogeneity
of visual culture.
This was a main thematic
of The Medium
is the Musage,
pp. 112-l 17.
Ibid., p. 120.
M. McLuhan
and Quentin
Fiore, The Medium
See especially,
M. McLuhan,
Understanding
Media, p. 68.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 80.
Ibid., p, 141.
M. McLuhan,
“The Relation
of Environment
&Anti-Environment,”
in E Marsen’s
The
Human
Dialogue: Perspectives
on Communications,
New York: The Free Press, 1967, p. 43.
Charles Norris Cochtane,
“The Latin Spirit in Literature,”
University
of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 3, (1932 - 33), pp. 315-338.
Professor Andrew
Wernick
coined this term in describing
the interplay
of power/media
in the thought
of the contemporary
French social theorist,
Jean Baudrillard.
The CyberneticDelirium
of NorbertWiener
StephenPfohl
[M]y delirium assumed the form of a particular mixture of depression
and worry.. . anxiety about the logical status of my.. . work. It was
impossible for me to distinguish among my pain and diff~culry in
breathing, the flapping of the window curtain, and certain as yet
unresolved points of the potential problem on which I was working. I
cannot say that the pain revealed itself as a mathematical tension, or that
the mathematical tension symbolized itself as a pain: for the two were
united too closely to make such a separation significant. However, when
I reflected on this marter later, I became aware of the possibility that
almost any experience may act as a temporary symbol for a marhematicaI situation which has not yet been organized and cleared up. I also
came to see more definitely than I had before that one of the chief
motives driving me to mathematics was the discomfort or even the pain
of an unresolved marhematicaI discord. I even became more and more
conscious of the need to reduce such a discord to semipermanent and
recognizable terms before I couId release it and pass on to something
else.
All around me, inside me, flowing through me, between me and others, it is
easy to discern signs of the flexible, mass marketing of cybernetic delirium. This is a
delirium associated with both cyber-products and cyber-experience.
“Cyber-this”
and “cyber-that.”
Its hard to do the ritual of the check-out line these days, without
some magnetic cyber-commodity-connectors
wrapping their seductive sensors,
cheek to cheek, in feedback loops with yours. Commanding
attention. Inviting a
try. Not that the effects are homogeneous. Nor the possibilities. From cyber-sexshopping-surveillance,
to cyber-philosophy,
and even utopian dreams of cyborg
revolts - whether for fun, or out of desperation, flaming desire, or for want of
more passionate and politically effective connections - the world around and
within me appears increasingly mediated by a kind of delirious cyber-hyphenation
of reality itself. This is a short (sociological) story of the history of this hyphenated
Digital
Delirium
115
world. This story revolves around the delirium of Norbert Wiener, the so-called
“father” of cybernetic perspectives on physical and social reality, Today, Wiener’s
delirium has become our own.
My suggestion is this: that for worse and for better, we are today virtually all
struggling to survive and communicate - if differently and in different modes within the hegemonic exigencies of cybernetic culture. Fast flows of British Telecorn. Quick jolts of profit. Bye bye MCI. 182,000 jobs in motion. Seventy countries. Market value $64 Billion. An implosion of tears. “Hi, Mom. Happy Valentine’s Day!” A looping fragment of memory catches my eye/“I,” as information
enflames the sensory manifold between us. Turning me on. Off. Turning history
inside outside. The flapping of a window curtain. The digital smoothness of the
screen separating my body from data-driven images of yours. The flickering of
electronically mediated fantasies between us. And fears. Wired bodies. Hard bodies.
Micro-soft hearts. Energetically aroused, then fashionably abandoned. I love the
advert tattooing your sex. You love my CK Infinity. Or so I’m led to imagine. Day
dream. On credit. This is cybernetic capital. This is ultramodern
power. A digitized
white grid of anxious informational
pleasures and pains. “As the CEO’s and the
specialist consultants of the virtual class triumphantly
proclaim: ‘Adapt or you’re ,
toast.“‘z The smell of burning flesh.
Cybernetics typically denotes the interdisciplinary
study and strategic
deployment of communicative
control processes in “complex systems” constituted
by humans, other animals, machines, and the rest of living-nature.
In what follows,
I wish to suggest an even broader use of this term. Cybernetics, not simply as a field
of techno-science research and application, but as a term connoting the most farreaching of ultramodern
forms of social control. In this sense, I will be using the
phrase, social cybernetics, to provisionally
configure the fluid, high speed, and
densely layered webs of communicatively
driven positive and negative “feedback’
which, this very moment, affect the ways you are receiving my words. This is a story
of how loops of cybernetic feedback are informing the energetic ritual organization
of power between ourselves and others. Within the fast-flexible boundaries of global
capital, the most dominant, but certainly not’all, of these feedback loops carry a
masculine, heterosexist, and racially inscribed charge. This is a history of the
present.
Decentered, as loops of communicative
feedback may appear from within
various localized scenes of capital, cybernetic control practices today guide the
hegemonic marketing of both meaning and material survival within the bodily
confines of a cruel, complex, and contradictory
socio-economic
system. Increasingly, this system - capital in its ultramodern
or cybernetic mode - is incorporating the entire world as its parasitic playground for profit. I make this suggestion,
not to Luther existing loops of communicative
feedback, which make the
televisionary marketing of paranoiac fears (and fascinations) big business. Instead,
this is to join in some minor way, with others, in encouraging a heterogeneous
affinity of collective, energetic, and “power-sensitive”
efforts to reflexively double
back upon and, thereby, better (theoretically) converse about - as well as jam,
subvert, detour, and, by any means possible, contribute to the ritual transformation
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of - the violent and sickeningly hierarchical “order of things” in which I find
myself writing to you. Partial and provisional transformations;
transformations
in
the direction of ritual organizational
forms which are more just, more life affirming,
and more loving.
The word, cybernetics, derives from the Greek term, ,$&emetics, referring to
mechanisms of steering, governing, or control. The term was first used with
reference to “human engineering”
by MIT mathematician,
Norbert Wiener, during
and in the years immediately
following World War II. Perhaps deliriously, It was,
after all, a time of war. First hot, then cold. And, as Paul Virilio astutely observes, a
culture of war is also a culture of delirium - a culture where the ordinary “tools of
perception” are suggestively, ritually, magically, spectacularly, technologically,
almost
halluncinatorily,
retooled.3 Wiener was something of a child prodigy, and a Harvard
Ph.D. in mathematics by age nineteen. He was also a pioneer in the application of
statistically-based
nonlinear mathematics to problems of “circular causation” and
“self-adjusting
feedback.” As part of the war effort, Wiener collaborated with Julian
Bigelow and other mathematicians
and scientists, gathered under the auspices of the
MIT Radiation Laboratory. Directed by Warren Weaver of the Rockefeller Foundation, this lab was a high priority, D2 Section, project, under the command of the
National Defense Research Committee. Wiener and Bigelow made innovative and
unprecedented
complex use of “ergodic theorems” and “integral equations,” in what
has been described as a “revolution”
in (computational)
communications
engineering. During the final years of the Second World War, this revolution triggered
significant advances in the design, production, and strategic deployment of antiaircraft guns and precision bombing equipment. After the war, it would change an
entire way of life.
Wiener and Bigelow’s innovative mathematical labors were themselves in a
complex and militarily mediated loop of communicative
feedback with other
exponential leaps being made at the same time in both computing and telecommunications. Many of these advances were made possible by the refined development
of the vacuum tube. Nevertheless, in Wiener’s account of these events, it is clear
that it was the context of war which hastened the production
of the cybernetic
imagination.
Though the vacuum tube received its debut in the communications
industry, the boundaries and extent of this industry were not fully
understood for a long period. There sporadic uses of the vacuum tube
and its sister invention, the photoelectric cell, for scanning the products
of industry, for example regulating the thickness of a web coming out of
a paper machine, or for inspe’cting the color of a can of pineapples.
These uses did not as yet form a reasoned new technique, nor were they
associated in engineering mind with the vacuum tubes other function,
communications.
AI1 this changed in the war. One of the few things gained from the great
conflict was rapid development of invention, under the stimulus of
necessity and the unlimited employment of money.. . At the beginning
DigitaJ Delirium
117
of rhe war, our greatest need was to keep England from being knocked
out by an overwhelming air attack. Accordingly, the anti-aircraft canon
was one of the first objects of our sciei&c effort, especially when
combined with the airplane-detecting device of radar or ultra-highfrequency Hertzian waves. The technique of radar used the same
modalities as the existing radio besides inventing new ones of its own. It
was thus natural to consider radar as a branch of communications
theory.
Besides finding airplanes by radar it was necessary to shoot them down.
This involves the problem of fire control. The speed of the airplane has
made it necessary to compute the elements of the trajectory of the antiaircraft missile by machine, and to give the predicting machine fimcCons which had previously been assigned to human beings. Thus the
problem of anti-aircraft fire control made a new generation of engineers
familiar with the notion of a communication addressed to a machine
rather than to a person.“4
If the problem of “anti-aircraft fire” is a problem of “goal-directed
communications,” for the emerging science of cybernetics, its solution lies in the notion of
regulated feedback. In cybernetics, the principle of feedback is (aesthetically)
imaged as the operative force guiding a “contingent world” of beings in reciprocal
energetic communication.
For Wiener, this occurs in both animals and the new
high-speed computing machines his mathematics helped bring into being. Each
makes use of “sensory organs” and magnetic “memory” devices. Together these
operate to produce ongoing comparisons between past and present exchanges
between information
and energy. In humans and other animals, this involves what
Wiener described as “a kinaesthetic sense,” which keeps “a record of the position
and tensions of their muscles.“5 In the new computing machines, this fimction was
handled by a combination
of data scanning and taping devices. But in addition to
logging an ongoing “comparison of inputs to goals,” cybernetic feedback processes
involve something more interactive - “a reciprocal flow” of “two-way interaction
between controller and controlled.” This operates “not only to communicate
influence from the former to the latter, but also to communicate back the results of
this action.“h
This image of interactive feedback strikes me as, at once, perverse and
utopian. On one hand, it celebrates the control of some subjects over others. On
the other, it decenters the communicative
practices these subjects use to exert
control within a dynamic web of interactive feedback, shaped, in part, by the
communicative
actions of those being controlled. In other words, cybernetics
substitutes for a simplistic one-way command model a vision of message-sending
and message-receiving “subject-objects,”
each mediated by the agency of communicative practice itself. This is an agency of letters, icons, and moving pictures. Don’t
be surprised if you here find resemblances between cybernetics, with its imaginary
of decentered communicators
ensnared within flowing webs of scriptural, textual,
and textural feedback, and the image of social life offered by certain versions of
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poststructuralist
theory. Cybernetics and poststructuralist
thought emerge in related
(mid-to-late-twentieth
century) historical times and spaces. Neither is genealogically
innocent of the other. Neither materially; nor in the imaginary realm. When read
critically, each also suggests (potentially)
reflexive “power-sensitive”
images of
sacrifice.’ And repetition.
The command, control, and communicative
possibilities of cybernetics are
rooted in the repeated sacrifice of other ways of being in and communicating
about
the worlds “we” are in. This makes cybernetics a restrictive economic practice.8 It
sacrificially banishes other possible worlds for the purpose of provisionally
fixing,
stabilizing, and communcatively
controlling
the boundaries which stake out the
“contingent
world” of which cybernetics is itself constitutively a part. Cybernetics
also seeks to monitor, regulate, and modify the dynamic loops of feedback governing this contingent world’s continuance. And its change. In cybernetics, the
material effect of dynamic flows of feedback is the ongoing informational
shaping
of some worlds, to the statistical reduction of others. In this sense, there is also more
than a bit of existentialism guiding Wiener’s cybernetic imaginary. But, then,
Wiener, like Sartre, was writing to combat what he discerned as the deadly freezeframings of fascism. In contrast to the reductive and homogenizing
violence of
fascism, Wiener pictured cybernetics as offering a dynamic image of communicative
exchange between heterogeneous beings; energetically scanning, monitoring,
reading, interpreting,
and adjustively responding to one another; all the while
reproducing,
modifying, defending, resisting, yielding, penetrating, and/or blurring
the boundaries between themselves and others; these others now appearing ecologically, as if environments,
as if spatially, temporarily outside:
Inside and out, cybernetics offers a model of “circular causation.” Can you
picture it? Wiener did. Which comes first: the cybernetic chicken or a golden egg?
The answer, of course, is neither. Both are circularly caused: interactively, dynamically, reciprocally. Not mechanically, but in information-governed
energetic
exchange. Not one-way. But not all ways at once, either. Because when that happens, things loose their shape, liquefy; loose their distinction, their distinctiveness,
their boundaries. Like water spinning in water; or lovers embracing from the
outside in. But, orderly loops of communicative
feedback control against such
lovely, if dangerous, plays of chaos. As such, orderly feedback processes facilitate the
erection of secure boundaries; helping to quiet, absorb, silence, control, construct
sound proof boundaries against noise. All this replaces earlier modern (scientific
and popular cultural) images of “cause leading to effect. ” Substituted for such linear
modelings of causation is a more complexly suggestive theoretical-statistical
imaginary: a computational
modeling of “interactive” shapings and reshapings of
the energetic boundaries between communicative
agents - not all of whom need
be human.
By making informational
objects out of each other, ceaseless and circular
cybernetic communicators
alter the environments within which they and others
energetically interact. Consider the information
produced by a radar screen in
communication
with a human operator, two of the earliest “subject-objects”
to be
wired into the telelectronic circuitry of the cybernetic imagination.
Here, informa-
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tion is “processed to calculate the adjustment on gun controls to improve aim; the
effectiveness of the adjustments is observed and communication
via radar, and then
this new information
is used again to readjust the aim of the gun, and so on. If the
calculations are automated, one is dealing with a self-steering device; indeed, the
whole system inducing the participating
human beings can be viewed as a selfsteering device.“9
While situating the “new science” of cybernetics within the old sciences of
war, Wiener simultaneously
expressed horror at the contributions
of other mathematicians, scientists, and engineers to the construction and use of nuclear weapons. Wiener was profoundly
suspicious about structural complicities between elite
scientific institutions and governmental-military
sources of funding. In 1941 he
resigned from the National Academy of Science in protest. Soon thereafter he
withdrew completely from governmental and military-based
service, never again to
receive state funding for the production of knowledge. Indeed, throughout
his
subsequent career, Wiener operated somewhat doubly - as both a scientist and
ethical commentator
on the practice of science. Still, the wartime successes of
cybernetic technologies inspired Wiener and others to search for an ever-widening
“interface” between command, control, and communication
processes in a diverse
array of machinic, biological, and social systems. lo In pursuit of this interface, from
1946 to 1953, Wiener met regularly with John von Neumann (whose mathematical
labors, unlike Wiener’s, contributed directly to digital computations
necessary for
U.S. military experiments with atomic weaponry against Japan) and other early
cybernetic&s,
in a series of intensive conferences on cybernetics, sponsored by the
Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. Also attending some of these sessions were leading
figures of post-war social science - Margaret Mead, Talcott Parsons, Gregory
Bateson, Kurt Lewin, and Robert K. Merton, among others. Overall, the Macy
conferences sought to “generate a new kind of link between engineering, biology,
mathematics on one hand and psychology, psychiatry, and all the social sciences on
the other.“” And, in this, they succeeded. If not exactly in the blink of an eye/I,
then exponentially
and steadily over the last half-century.
As a young American white boy in the 195Os, cybernetics enveloped me like a
second skin, a second nature. Indeed, night after night I would be lulled into halfdream states, swollen with telecommunicative
feedback. The radio rocking me,
rolling me, somewhere between wakefulness and electronic slumber. Phone now!
Vote for your favorite stars! Request your favorite black tunes sung by white voices!
And, of course, I did. Nothing has been the same since. This is no confession. This
is a description of collective cybernetic signalings which run through my body, like
blood, only much faster. This is also a description of a most material aspect of
recent social history. For indeed, practical embodiments of the cybernetic world
view have spread to virtually all fields of power, knowledge, and culture. As such,
boundaries have become blurred between “once artificially separated areas of
thought” as “more and more of the world is seen in terms of information.
Just look
at the account books, the projections, the numbers and the returns.. . Stocks and
commodities,
the securities markets, banking, currency, options, futures.. . [A]11
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these markets must now be rethought and restructured,” because today each is
increasingly experienced as little but a kind of “telematic” exchange of feedback
between information
and energy.‘*
From a doctors’ imagination
of her patient to the CIA and IBM’s imagination of its competitors and clients and, maybe, even your imagination
of me, vast
“flows” of the world as “we” have come to know it over the last fifty years have been
(ritually) coded and recoded as seemingly nothing but matters of information.
“Even the simplest of conversations are separated, reconfigured, sent and priced.
And those who live in this new world are losing their grip on.. . older [and other
possible constructions of] reality. As for those who have no access to, no participation in, this newly imposed world, they are [forced] out of the world’s new information economy, doomed to obsolescence and death.“‘3
Somewhere between the Real and a Militarized
Imaginary
Returning to Wiener’s deliriurn: in 1950, the MIT mathematician
declared:
“It is the purpose of Cybernetics is to develop a language and techniques that will
enable us to indeed attack the problems of control and communications
in general.“” Despite his critical attitude toward military appropriations
of scientific
know-how, it is important to note the militaristic resonances vibrating in Wiener’s
own phrasings. To.. . attack the problems of control and communications.
Such
resonances remain deeply entrenched within contemporary
social cybernetics.
Adapt or you’re toast! Moreover, given the omnipresence of cybernetic control
mechanisms across a wide range of contemporary
institutions, it is.vital to remember the ritual origins of this logic and its limits. Wiener, of course, was not alone in
providing military undertones for this new science. This is clear in the work of
Donna Haraway. Haraway draws attention to the relationship between cybernetics
and the militaristic economy of capiltalist patriarchy out of which it has evolved.
Conceptualizing
the logic of cybernetics as a powerful “theoretical fiction” which
forecloses other ways of making sense of the world, Haraway, like Wiener, traces the
roots of this ideology to the labor of interdisciplinary
teams of government funded
researchers during and after the Second World War. Indeed, the “extraordinary
organization
of scientists in the war effort in Britain and the United States threw
biologists together with engineers, linguists, physicists, mathematicians,
and
administrators
in intense activity that had profound consequences” for both the
conceptualand
practical reorganization
of sciences, such as biology. And,for the
management of everyday socio-economic
systems as well.15
Haraway’s work points us to a particular social scene: a series of white male
dominated research settings organized around the demands of hot and cold war, a
theater of perpetual war it seems. Wrthin this theater, “command-control
systems,
called animal societies and populations,
came to be known through technical,
theoretical and practical procedures chat [sacrificially] acknowledged naturaltechnical objects as problems in military strategy; industrial production,
in which
the worker is a system-component
whose error rates must be controlled by information and resource management; in psychiatric management of overloaded, stressed
communicative
systems; and in engineered design of automated control systems.“r6
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“Ether, having once failed as a concept is being reinvented. Information
is the
ultimate mediational ether. Light doesn’t travel through space: its is information
that travels through information..
. at a heavy price.“17
Consider, for instance, the electri+ing
ideas of information
theorist Conrad
Hal Waddington.
Waddington
sought to model “information
flows” in relation to
differentially
constrictive boundaries of energy. In so doing, he facilitated a general
transference of methods associated with operations research in military organizations to the emergent field of molecular biology, where a new image of the body as
an information-driven
communications
system was already beginning to take hold.
In this regard, it is crucial to recognize that Waddington
himself developed his ideas
in feedback with a program of war-time research, sponsored by the British Royal
Air Force Operations Research Section and aimed at countering the effectivity of
German U-boats.1R This is not to deny the value of Waddington’s
discoveries. The
value is high. But so are the costs. It is, instead, to suggest that - like Kant, during
an earlier, if related, time and space within capital -when
searching for language
to justify the (alleged) universality of particular aesthetic judgments, Waddington
theorized life as basically a problem in sublime military gamesmanship. In this
deadly and delirious game, as Waddington
figured it, bodily life itself was imagined
as little but a battlefield constructed around and between flows of energy and
information.
This is also evident in the language of W. Ross Ashby, an early theorist
and popularizer of cybernetics. According to Ashby:
[Ihe inborn characteristics of living organisms are simply the strategies
that have been found satisfactory over centuries of competition and
built into the young animal so as to be ready for use at the first demand.
Just as so many players have found ‘P-Q4’ a good way of opening a
game of chess, so many species found ‘growth teeth’ to be a good way of
opening the Battle of Life.”
If this sounds a bit like a delirious replay of Herbert Spencer’s imperial
sociological rhetoric of “survival of the fittest,” this should be no surprise to those
familiar with the social cybernetics advanced by long time Harvard sociologist,
Talcott Parsons. Parsons functionalist theories dominated U.S. sociological thinking throughout
the 1950s and early 1960s. Moreover, Parsons’ vision of society as a
communicative
“social system” represented an explicit synthesis of Spencer’s thesis
concerning adaptative societal evolution and recent developments in the science of
cybernetics. Parsons pictured human subjects as “behavioral organisms” whose
“communicative
actions” were guided by “a cybernetic system located mainly in the
central nervous system, which operates through several intermediary
mechanisms to
control the metabolic processes of the organism and the behavioral use of its
physical facilities, such as the motions of limbs. “20 Indeed, for Parsons, the “same
basic principle of cybernetic hierarchy,” where information
communicatively
commands the expenditure of energy, and the reverse, was said to be “the fundamental basis for classifying the components of social systems.“” Of particular
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importance was the communicative
role of money as “a cybernetic mechanism at
the symbolic cultural level,” capable of integrating instrumental
economic action
within “the total society as a system.“22
Parsons used the term “cybernetic hierarchy of control” to describe the
orderly adjustment of rationally evolving social systems. In this sense, Parson’s
cybernetic functionalism
combines Spencer’s evolutionary viewpoint with ideas
about adjustive feedback drawn from mid-twentieth-century
biology. In Parsons’
own words, his ideas about the evolution of social systems in their entirety “coincided with a set of developments within biological theory and in general science notably the ‘new genetics’ and cybernetic theory - which indicated a far greater
continuity
between human socio-culturai
evolution and that of the organic world
than had been [previously] widely appreciated. “23 Parsons visualized a communicative exchange between information
and energy as a core steering mechanism
underlying evolutionary
social development. “One source of change may be excesses
in either information
or energy in the exchange among action systems. In turn,
these excesses alter the informational
or energetic outputs across systems and within
any system. For example, excesses of motivation (energy) would have consequences
for the enactment of roles or the normative structure and eventually of cultural
value orientations. Another source of change comes from an insufflcient supply of
either energy or information,
again causing external and internal readjustments in
the structure of action systems.“24 For example, informational
conflict would cause
normative conflict or anomie, which in turn would have consequences for the
personality and organismic systems.
Inherent in Parson’s cybernetic hierarchy of control are concepts that point to
systemic interconnections
between both stasis and change. If Parson’s seemingly
“neutral” depiction of social change, as a genetic-like mechanism of coded communicative adjustment, appears inattentive to the sacrificial exigencies of human
historical struggles over the shaping of power, perhaps, this is because Parsons
tautologically
defines power as but t:he “capacity of a social system to mobilize
resources to attain collective goals.“2s This ignores the effects of historically rooted
social hierarchies and the struggles of people oppressed by unequal power. Such
thorny issues are smoothed over by the fluid machinic metaphors of cybernetic
theory. But as Arthur Kroker observes, this shift to a cybernetic concept of power
signals “a grand reversal” in sociological understandings
of the relation “culture and
economy” and between “categories of power and capital.“*” Even when formulated
in the crudest of Darwinian
terms by Spencer, this conception already contained
“the essential bourgeois discovery that political economy would now take place
within a ‘regulatory’ order of dominations
and powers.“*’ A central aspect of
Parson’s massive contribution
to the disciplinary character of North American
sociology was the “normalization”
of such a self-preserving system’s logic. This
represents an institutionally
guided “descent into a virtual reality” where “all the
referents, from money and power to health and intelligence”
become coded as if
“pure cybernetic processes.“28
In reflecting upon his own interest in cybernetics, Parsons notes the influence
of such “systems-oriented”
biological theorists as Claude Bernard and W.C. Can-
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123
non. But the impressions made by Harvard biochemist L.J. Henderson were of
particular significance. During the depression, Henderson’s influential seminars on
the Italian sociologist and economist Vilfredo Pareto underscored the role of living
systems in the organization of all social forms and were attended somewhat religiously by a variety of thinkers, including Parsons, sociobiologist
E.O. Wilson, and
social scientists of various ilk, such as George Homans, Robert K. Merton, Henry
Murray, and Clyde Kluckholm.
“Henderson stressed the importance of Pareto’s
model of a social system and the notion of equilibrium
in his teaching although it is
also true that the Harvard physiologist’s support for the Italian intellectual’s ideas
was connected to his anti-Marxist
elitism. Henderson was an extreme conservative
in his political views and saw Pareto’s theory as many others with his opinions saw it
- as the one social/economic
theory which could counterpose Marxism in accounting for the depression.“*’
For Henderson, as for Parsons and many others who would soon develop an
enthusiasm for cybernetics, Pareto’s theories heralded “the commencement
of a new
era in the history of thought”3
They also presaged a dissolving of informational
boundaries between sociology, biology and economics. “That the America of the
depression proved receptive to Pareto’s thought is not surprising.. . [H]is work
appealed to two major strains in the climate of opinion of the thirties: belief in the
saving authority of science and loss of belief in the authority of tradition. [Time
compresses into space; then the reverse.] His positivism appealed in an intellectual
climate in which only the claims of science still stood unchallenged, and his
debunking stance was congenial to intellectuals whose moorings had been severely
shaken ever since the bottom dropped out of the stock market in 1929. [As a
homeostatic systems theorist] Pareto was largely read as a kind of bourgeois answer
to Marx.“3’
Parsons also acknowledged the impact of a continuing
“Conference on
Systems Theory” held in Chicago from 1952-57 and particularly the role of insect
biologist Alfred Emerson who “spoke.. . in such a way as strongly to predispose me,
and I think others, in favor of the then just emerging conceptions of cybernetic
contr01.“32 Parsons was also a Kantian thinker who shared the idealist philosopher’s
dilemma concerning the difficulties of claiming universal knowledge from a strictly
phenomenal
point of view. And while Kant “solved” this dilemma by attending to
the disembodied “genius” of sublime aesthetics, Parsons’ cybernetic solution was of
a related sort. Like Kantian thought, Christian metaphysics and ultramodern
warfare, cybernetics too is “guided by an underlying compulsion to aesthetics.“j3 In
this, “the new genetic biology of combinants and recombinants contributes (analogically, it is true, but in the specific sense of structural similitude) to an interpretation of power as a ‘site of battle’ between genetic inheritance (the categorical
imperative?) and the empirical ‘range of variations’ (the phenomenal world?).“”
Here the body appears to disappear behind a coded screen of symbols. At long last,
and during a Cold War no less, the word (of certain men) takes its place as more
originary than flesh and moreover everlasting. 35 In the beginning was the word and
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the word was made flesh, states John’s Gospel. Reducing bodily energies to that
which is vocationed by information,
cybernetics makes the same assumption. So
does ultramodern
capital.
Digitized
Sacritice,
Delirious
Flows: kitty cats, missiles and me
What (or who) is left out of the picture of the world we are in when the
world itself is portrayed as if nothing but “pure cybernetic processes?” And what
haunts this most powerful of late twentieth-century
theoretical-fictions?
The
answer, according to Norbert Wener, is the “evil” of chaos - the noise of disorganized forms and the entropic erosion of workable boundaries between “subjectobjects” in communicative
flux. To better understand this, as well as the dominant
tendencies within cybernetic control mechanisms, let us return to Wiener’s own
.
statement of his theoretical-boddy
delirium.
Wiener informs us that his anxiety was sparked by an inability (prompted by
the onset of bronchopneumonia)
to make clear distinctions between symbols and
the objects they represented - an inability to distinguish between words and
things. “It was impossible,” he suggests, “to distinguish among my pain and
difliculty in breathing, the flapping of the window curtain, and certain as yet
unresolved points on the potential problem on which I was working.” More
disturbing was the cybernetician’s inability to say whether this pain revealed itself as
“a mathematical
tension” or whether this mathematical tension was somehow
symbolizing itself in the pain he embodied. Unable to clearly discern meaningful
feedback about such matters becausse “the two were united too closely to make such
a separation possible,” Wiener worries about the randomness which overturns his
search for knowledge. Indeed, it appears “that almost any experience may act as a
temporary symbol for a mathematical situation which has not yet been organized
and cleared up.” In reflecting upon this delirious moment, Wiener grasps “one of
the chief motives” which drives him toward cybernetics - the need to reduce an
“unresolved discord” to “semipermanent
and recognizable terms.”
Wiener’s biographer, Steve Heims agrees, observing at the core of the cybermathematician’s
personal and theoretical passions an obsession with “finding
predictability
through chaos or signal through noise.“J” But this was a difficult task
for Wiener, convinced as he was by the theoretical vision of quantum physics,
suggesting ongoing transformations
between even the most seemingly solid of
matters and the dynamic waves of energy which solid-state particles only temporarily congeal and contain. Wiener sought, through refinements of Gibbsian (nonlinear) statistical computations,
to provide a flexible mathematical basis for quantum mechanics. And through the communicative
imagery of cybernetics provide a
dynamic medium for mapping the transformative “interactions”
which bind and
unbind energy within always only relatively predictable material boundaries. In this,
Wiener imagined himself advancing beyond Einstein’s theories of relativity. From
the cybernetic viewpoint, Einstein’s ideas, like Newtons, remained burdened with
“absolutely rigid dynamics not introducing
the idea of probability. Gibbs’ work on
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125
the other hand, is probabilistic from the very start, yet both directions represent a
shift in the point of view of physics in which the world as it actually is replaced in
some sense or other by the world as it happens to be observed.“37
In truth, Wiener sought to reformulate Einstein’s position, suggesting that,
“In his theory of relativity it is impossible to introduce the observer without also,
introducing
the idea of the message.“j8 While clearly an advantage over “the
Newtonian subordination
of everything to [fixed] matter and mechanics,” Einstein’s
reliance on observer-mediated
measures of (one-way) optical radiation (from sender
to receiver) limited the radical@ of his theoretical discoveries. Wiener argued that
Einstein’s physics closely paralleled Leibnitz’s pre-Newtonian
notions of a lively
universe of monads in optical (space-time distorted) communication
with each
other. This paralleled Leibnitz’s own visual-theoretical
fascinations with mechanical
“clock-like” automata. For Leibnitz, the temporal “concordance”
of these little
dancing machines set in motion at the same point in time suggested a “pre-established harmony” of monads signaling to each other. Here, as in Einstein’s image of
light traveling from source to receiver, “the little figures which dance on the top of a
music box.. . move in accordance with a pattern, but it is a pattern which is set in
advance.“39 Wiener’s cybernetic view of physics suggested something more “indeterminate” and energetically “interactive. ” Whereas, Einstein’s light waves and
Leibnitz’s dancing figures display “no trace of communication
with the outer world,
except “one-way.. . communication”
guided by a “pre-established
mechanism,” the
movement of things in the world in which Wiener found himself communicating
appeared more complex - both computationally
and ontologically.
This complex world Wiener shared with “moderately intelligent”
animals,
such as cute little kittens. Meow. Meow. “I call to the kitten and it looks up. I have
sent it a message which it has received by its sensory organs, and it registers in
action. The kitten is hungry and lets out a painful wail. [Pain again. Hum. Yes, pain
seems a repeated feature of Wiener’s cybernetic delirium. Whose pain?]. . . The
Kitten bats at a swinging spool.. . This time it is the sender of a message.. . The
spool swings to its left, and the kitten catches it with its left paw. This time messages of a very complicated nature are both sent and received within the kittens own
nervous system through nerve end-bodies in its joints, muscles, and tendons; and
by means of nervous messages sent by the organs, the animal is aware of the actual
position and tensions of its tissues. It is only through these organs that anything like
a manual skill is possible.“40
But accompanying Wiener and his hungry cyber-kitten is another kind of
complex communicator
- a new generation of flexible automata, the (mathematical) configuration
of which underscored the inadequacy of Einstein’s and Leibnitz’s
lingering optic-mechanical
rigidities. Unlike the older automata, which operated
according to pre-programmed
“clock-work,”
these new cybernetic machines - and
believe me there are more each moment - are characterized as feedback-driven
automata, possessing sensor organ functions as well taping-memory
and translationcomparison capacities. This makes them “interactively”
flexible in their command,
control, and communicative
capabilities. In 1950, Wiener included among their
number “the controlled missile, the proximity fuse, the automatic door opener, the
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control apparatus for a chemical factory, the rest of the modern armory of automatic machines which perform military or industrial functions.” I mention this
hardly innocent of the machines through which I myself am sending messages to
you. Both the real ones and the imaginary.
In Wiener’s cybernetic story all these machines face a common enemy entropy, chaotic disorganization,
or noise - the villain of “the second law of
thermodynamics.”
Against this enemly Wiener pits the informational
effectivity of
commanding
communicative
feedback. This facilitates the erection of a temporarily
“closed system,” a “local enclave” against chaos, “whose direction seems opposed to
that of the universe at large and in which there is a limited and temporary tendency
for organization
to increase.“41 But over time “entropy increases.. . and all closed
systems in the universe tend naturally to deteriorate and lose their distinctiveness”
as they move from (what Gibbsian statistics discerns as) “the least to the most
probable state, from a state of organization
and differentiation
in which distinctions
and forms exist, to a state of chaos and sameness.“42 But having stated this, Wiener
then makes a delirious leap from physics to a death-defying
onto-theology,
connecting the counter-entropic
vocation of cybernetics to the writings of St. Augustine.
This, perhaps, is the most problematic aspect of Wiener’s work. For by linking the
mission of his new science with the rnoral vision of Augustine, Wiener’s writings
suggest a dangerous temptation within cybernetics to subordinate finite and
relational bodily matters to the infinitely commanding
and abstract sign-work of
the s01.J.~~Whose soul?
In this philosophical
aspect of Wiener’s work, cybernetics becomes a moral
science fitted to do battle against its evil arch enemy - disorganization.
This
enemy, Wiener asserts, is not the Manichean devil with its crafty tricks of dissimulation but “the Augustinian
devil, which is not a power in itself, but the measure of
our own weakness.“44 But the “Augustinian
devil is stupid.” And while it “plays a
difhcult game” of “passive resistance” to orderly communicative
coding, “swamping” informational
messages with the “noise” of unbounded energy, it is also a devil
defeated by a rigorous cybernetic “intelligence as thoroughly
as by the sprinkle of
holy water.“45
Here it is important to recall, even though Wiener makes no mention of this,
that one of the most arresting aspects of Augustine’s theology is its fierce and
vehement expression of hatred for the flesh of women. And for pagans. But Wiener
mentions only Augustine’s hatred of (chaos, which he transcodes as a life-preserving
pursuit of clearly bounded flows of communicative
feedback. In Augustine’s
writings, chaos is figured in seductive and pagan-feminine
forms. Evil forms. Paganwoman as chaos. Pagan-woman as evil. Pagan-woman as “gateway to the devil.“4”
This is a figure to be combated by closing the finite eye of the (masculine) flesh; all
the while, opening inwardly into an infinite mirror play of perfect Trinitarian
“three-in-One”
identity. Perfectly the same and yet simultaneously
different. A
perfectly informed communicative
erasure of difference, this is also a fantasy of
timeless self-perpetuation.
Pure autopoiesis. Pure simultaneity. Pure information.
It
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127
is infinitely easier to imagine, as is the case with both Augustine and Wiener, when
no mother is involved. Or, when the only mother involved is a fleshless, holy
ghostly info-mother.
“Ma Bell” or whoever. No noise. No sin.
Wiener deliriously imagines cybernetics as a holy scientific weapon which
uses the study of communicative
feedback loops to both uncover and “exorcise”
entropic noise. In this, he converts the little (counter-entropic)
demons of Clerk
Maxwell’s nineteenth-century
science into the informational
angels guiding our
own. As gatekeepers regulating the “useful” flow of otherwise ethereal energies,
Maxwell’s demons seemed to “overcome the tendency of entropy to increase” within
defined communicative
locales. But in sacrificially carving out protected pockets of
organization these demons simultaneously threw the wider universe into disequilibrium. This is because neither humans nor other communicators
ever truly exist in
“isolated systems. We take in food, which generates energy, from the outside, and
we are, as a result, parts of the larger world which contains those sources of our
vitality.“47
The same holds for Wiener’s cybernetic angels, watching at the telelectronic
doors of communicative
feedback, securing the boundaries of some worlds against
others, digitally transcoding energy into information.
But at what or whose expense? This was a question Wiener continuously posed to himself and other
cyberneticians. And with good reason. After all, Wiener’s own work was situated
web of
within a very specific “local enclave” - the military-industrial-scientific
Cold War capitalist America. This enclave was fighting, and in large measure with
information,
not merely against entropy in general, but against historical and
material resistances to the systematic exploitation of the energies of others, as well as
against tendencies for the rate of exploitative profit to fall.
Wiener’s ethical vigilance about such matters initially inspired reflexive and
critical scholars, such as Gregory Bateson, Anthony Wilden, Heinz Von Forrester,
and Stafford Beers, to make use of cybernetic imagery and techniques in struggling
for a more just and ecologically sane order of things. “Power-sensitive”
cybernetic or
cyborg imagery is also politically configured in the writings of numerous contemporary writers, some of who appear in this book. But, I feel, for worse more than
better, Wiener’s cybernetic delirium, as well as his Augustinian
search for “closed
systems, ” are today most materially embodied, for exploitative profit and control,
within the dominant military-cultural
institutions of corporate capital world-wide.48
But this is less to dismiss cybernetics than to caution a reflexive, collective, and
historically informed socio-economic
engagement with the somewhat “hypnagogic,” almost dreamy, loops of televisionary feedback which today interact so
thoroughly with so much of our everyday lives. How, then, to effectively double
back upon such cyber-social scenes of sacrifice, so as to better notice, communicate,
and simultaneously
expel the unjust and sickening flow of the energies these
informational
forms bind and those they exile, deplete, or deaden? The answers to
this question are neither simple nor singular. They depend also on the feedback we
give and receive from one another.
Having said all this, I leave you with a final bit of feedback from Norbert
Wiener. And I wish you good cyborg dreams. In discussing his own “free-flowing”
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attempts to make imaginative theoretical sense of the “simultaneous aspect” of a
problem, Wiener directs attention to certain moments when key aspects of the
solution begin to crystallize.
“Very often these moments seem to arise on waking, but; but probably this
really means that sometime during the night I have undergone the process of
decor&ion
which is necessary to establish my ideas. I am quite certain that at least
part of this process can take place during what would ordinarily be described as
sleep, and in the form of a dream. It is probably more usual for it to take place in
the so-called hypnoidal state in which one is awaiting sleep, and it is closely
associated with those hypnagogic images which have some of the sensory solidity of
hallucinations
but which, unlike hallucinations,
may be manipulated
more or less at
will.. . The main ideas are not yet sufhciently differentiated
to make recourse to
symbolism easy and natural, they furnish a sort of improvised symbolism which
.may carry one through the stages until an ordinary symbolism becomes more
possible and appropriate.. . What remains to be done is very often the casting aside
of those aspects.. . that are not germane to the solution.“49
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Notes
1. Norbert
Wiener,
as quoted in Steve J. Heims, John Von Neumann
and Norbert
Wiener,
From Mathematics
to the Technologies of Ltj$ and Death. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press,
1980, pp. 147-148.
2. Arthur
Kroker and Michael
A. Weinstein,
Data Trash: the Theory ofth
virtual
Ckm. New
York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1994, p. 7.
3. Paul Vi&o,
War and Cinema: the Logictics ofhception.
Minneapolis:
University
of
Minnesota
Press, 1990, pp. 4-6.
4. Norbert
Wiener,
The Human
Use ofHuman
Beings: Cybernetics
and Society. London:
Free
Association
Books, 1989 (1950),
pp. 147-148.
5. Ibid., p. 24.
6. Norbert
Wiener,
Cybernetics:
or Control and Communication
in the Animal and the
Machine.
2nd ed. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1961, p. 11.
7. I here borrow
the term, “‘power-sensitive,”
from Donna.Haraway,
who uses it to suggest a
critical dimension
of “situated”
approaches
to objectivity,
as these work selfacknowledgedly
within
(or against) the grain of contextuaI
configurations
of power. See,
for instance,
Simians, Cyboxs and Women: the Reinvention
ofNature.
New York:
Routledge,
1992, p. 196. Elsewhere
I myself use the term, “power-reflexive,”
to indicate
related methodological
concerns.
See, Images of Deviance and Social Control: a Sociologikal
History.
2nd ed. New York: McGraw
Hill Book Co., 1994.
8. My use of the term, “restrictive
economic,”
invites a comparison
between cybernetics
and
the social physics of Georges Bataille. BataiIIe, a contemporary
of Wiener’s,
offers a theory
of a “general economy”
which, like cybernetics,
situates the movements
of life itself
within
a dynamic
field of flowing intercommunications.
Nevertheless,
BataiIle underscores the limited and repressive
character
of restrictive
economic
communications,
those
which “usefully”
establish “workable”
boundaries
between
subjects and objects. Cybernetics restricts
itself to the study of these “mmor”
communicative
forms which, despite their
utility, tragically
limit the convulsive
radiance
of “major”
communications.
For Bataihe,
the vertiginous
poetry of major communications
is associated
with the ecstatic ream of a
more intimate
“communion”
with the abundant
life energies. BataiIIe’s model of communication
was thus spiral: suggesting
periodic
exchange,
not only between identifiable
beings “imprisoned”
within
the feedback
loops of restrictive
communicative
forms - the
stuff of everyday
life - but also between minor and major forms of communication
themselves
- festive moments
of sacred effusion where boundaries
dissolve and beings
dance undifferentiatedly
as in “the flow of water or that of electric current.”
See, for
instance,
Georges BataiIIe, “Sacrifice,”
October 36 ((Spring
1986), pp. 61-74.
9. Steve J. Heims, John Von Neumann
and Norbert
Wiener,
From Mathematics
to the
Tecbnologiex of Lzj? and Death. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1980, p. 184.
10. For a discussion
of Wiener
and von Neuman’s
wartime
scientific
contributions
see, Steve
Heims, John von Neumann
and Norbert
Wiener,
From Mathematics
to the Technologies of
LZJ$ and Death. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1980:Von
Neumann,
already a scientific
advisor
to the U.S. Army’s
Ballistics Laboratory
in the years before the war, made strategic
mathematical
contributions
to the development
of digital computing
machines,
enabling
the complex
and high speed computations
necessary
for the design and production
of the
atomic bomb. Wiener,
whose technica
concerns
with cybernetic
feedback
processes were
130
Digital
Delirium
tempered by an ethical concern for the potentially “inhuman” uses of these same sources
of knowledge, upon learning of the U.S. use of atomic weaponry withdrew entirely from
military and governmental service, becoming somewhat of an “independent scholar” and
never again accepting governmenta funding for his continuing work with cybernetics.
11. Steve Heims, The Cybernetics Group. Cambridge, MIT Press, 199 1, p. 17.
12. Yurik, Metatron, pp. 40, 74, 12.
13. Ibid., p. 3.
14. Norbert Wiener, The Human Uses of Human Beings, p. 17.
15. Donna Haraway, “The High Cost of Information in Post-World War II Evolutionary
Biology: Ergonomics, Semiotics, and the Sociobiology of Communication Systems,” The
Philosophical
Forum, Vol. XIII, Nos. 2-3, (Winter-Spring
1981-82), p. 249.
16. Haraway, “The High Cost of Information.. .,” p. 246.
17. Ibid., p. 9.
18. Ibid., p. 249.
19. W. Ross Ashby, as quoted in Haraway, Ibid., p. 249.
20. Parsons, “A Paradigm for the Analysis of Social Systems,” p. 172.
21. Ibid, p. 173.
22. Talcott Parsons, Social Systems and the Evolution ofAction Theory. New York: The Free
Press, 1977, p. 267.
23. Ibid., p. 238.
24. Jonathan Turner, The Structure of Sociological Theory. 5th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth,
1991, p. 67.
25. Talcott Parsons, Social Theory andModern
Society. New York: The Free Press, 1967, p.
225.
26. Arthur Kroker, “Parsons’ Foucault,” in Arthur Kroker and David Cook, The Postmod~~~
Scene: Excremental
Culture and Hyper-Aesthetics.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986, pp.
215-242.
27. Ibid., p. 216.
28. Arthur Kroker and Michael A. Weinstein, Data Trmb: the Theory of the Wtual C&m. New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 51.
29. Peter Hamilton, Tdcott Parsons. London: Tavistock, 1983, pp. 59-60.
30. Lawrence J. Henderson, as quoted in Lewis A. Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought. 2nd
ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1977, p. 422.
3 1. Coser, Masters of Sociological
Thought, p. 423.
32. Talcott Parsons, “On Building Social Systems Theory,” Due&us,
(Fail 1970), p. 831.
33. Yurik, Metatron,
p. 7.
34. Kroker, “Parsons’ Foucault,” p, 217.
35. Parsons’ own complicity with Cold War political demands for information are perhaps
themselves symptomatic of the place of cybernetics within a militarized U.S. metaphysics.
Indeed, in the years immediately foollowing World War II, at the request of the US. Army
Intelligence and the State Department, Parsons engaged in a series of secret actions aimed
at circumventing official government regulations by helping to recruit Russian-born Nazi
collaborators, including a social scientist wanted as a “war criminal,” in order to better
Digital
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
Delirium
131
collect “cold war” information
on the Soviet Union. See, for instance,
Jon Wiener,
“Talcott
Parson’s Role: Bringing
Nazi Sympathizers
to the U.S.,”
The Nation, 6 March
1989, covet page and pp. 306-309.)
Steve Heims, John Von Neumann
and Norbert
Wiener,
pp. 146-147.
Norbert
Wiener,
The Human
Use ofHuman
Beings, p. 20.
Ibid., p. 20.
Ibid., p. 21.
Ibid, p. 22.
Ibid, p. 12.
Ibid.
My reading of Augustine
here is, in part, suggested by Arthur
Kroker and David Cook’s
provocative
reading of Augustine
as a precursor
to the disembodying
sign-power
of the
contemporary
“postmodern
scene. ” According
to Ktoker
and Cook: “the postmodern
scene in fact, begins in the fourth century with the Augustinian
subversion
of embodied
power,”
as “the Augustinian
reIitsaI” presages a “fatalistic
and grisly implosion
of experience as Western
culture itself runs under the signs of passive and suicidal nihilism.”
Arthur
Kroker and David Cook,
The Postmodern
Scene: Excremental
Culture and HyperAesthetics. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1986, p. 8.
Ibid, p. 35.
Ibid.
See, for instance,
discussions
of these issues in Monica
Sjoo and Barbara Mar, The Great
Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering
the Religion of the Earth. San Francisco:
Harper
and Row,
1987; John A. Philips, Eve: The History ofan Idea. San Francisco:
Harper
and Row, 1984.
Ibid, p. 29.
See, for instance,
Les Levidow
and Kevin Robins, eds. CyboT Worlds: the Military
Zn$rmation
Society. London,
Free Association
Books, 1989; Chris Hables Gray, ed., with
Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera
and Steven Mentor,
The Cyborg Handbook.
New York:
Routledge,
1995; and W&m
Bogard,
The Simulation
of Surveillance:
Hypercontrol
in
Tehmatic
Societies. New York: Cambridge
University
Press, 1996.
Norbert
Wiener,
as quoted in Steve J, Heims, John Von Neumann
and Notbert
Wiener,
p, 150.
CyberneticDelirium:
Two Remixes
Rupture Remix (verse-version)
Jute CL2yton(ikd.
/rupture)
182,000 jobs in motion. Seventy countries.
Market value $64 Billion.
An
implosion
of
I’m led to image
tears.
I love the advert tattooing
You love my CK Infinity.
Or so
I’m led to imagine.
Day dream. On credit.
This is cybernetic capital.
This is ultramodern
power.
Adapt or
you’re toast.
The smell f brnng flsh.
i-o-u
(nobody not even the rain has such $mall hands
your sex.
Digital
Delirium
133
Rupture Remix: splice edit (4:20 event)
SasbaCostanza-Chock (a.k. a. Splice)
cybernetic capital
ultramodern
power
ultramodern
capital
cybernetic power
Melody and I had to run to the mall yesterday to get money for her ticket to
Iphegania. Very high, we entered
cybernetic capital
ultramodern
power
ultramodern
capital
cybernetic power
time-out-of-time.
This is what capital uses to stand in for the TAZ; this is an
opposing pole or field; virtual space (dis)embodied:
a dream-within-a-dream,
nexu$
of power - the mall as a point at the conjunction of force lines that span the
world. Magical capital, sacrificial altar, church, mosque, synagogue.
Spatial disorientation:
mirrors on all sides and surfaces reflect each other into
infinity and reflect spectacle into being. If the 3rd order simulacra is an image with
no referent endlessly repeated, this is its home and vanishing point. It breeds and is
born in the mall, transmits itself into the human host here. It is more of a feeling
than a particular image, however.
This feeling is generated purposefully and encompasses all senses. Overwhelming empty spaces (mirrors and architecture, huge vertical hole surrounded by
balconies of shops) demand filling, and they can only be filled by.. . goods, of
course. This need is of course endless, insatiable; like the infinite reflections of’
vacuum that produce it, if it were real it could never be filled. The production
of an
unending desire.
Sound: this architecture also means that the mall is a giant resonating
chamber. Awash in reverberation (which effect is used, in the conventions of cinema
audio especially but any audio in general, to signify dreaming, intoxication,
or
flashbacks in time), all sounds in the space blend with one another in a muddy
dance that obscures originary points, paths of travel, distances, and directions.
The size and shape of this space also produce, below everything and almost
unnoticed but (because it is) omnipresent, a single, steady bass tone. This tone acts
like a cushion or pillow, which works with the wet reverb to buffer the body against
anything harsh, sudden, or uncomfortable.
Tones like this make people relaxed;
they are wonderful aids to falling asleep. They can be terrifying because they
surround the body entirely, blurring its edges and stroking them sensually.
134
Digital
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Time: there are, of course, no clocks to be seen; time here flows according
the passage of coins and bills.
to
cybernetic capital
ultramodern
power
ultramodern
capital
cybernetic power
We arrived at the cash machines. They have now all been replaced with the
touchscreen model.. . I had been, the day before, at the MIT Media Lab Brain
Opera open house, at which I played for a while with an interface based on the
same technology - peizoelectric sensors that read the charge on the skin - but
applied to music: a screen with liquid computer-generated
image substrate that is
played (it translates grid coordinates and pressure into alterations of a melody that
plays over headphones) by drawing in this substrate with a finger. I learned that
they were not entirely satisfied with this interface, partly because all technologies in
the Brain opera are designed to be as non-intrusive
as possible; the fact that people
have to remove their gloves in order for the sensors to pick up the electric charge on
the skin is a problem.. ,
Gloveless, i entered my password on the ATM screen by pressing the proper
screenal “buttons.” Watching others around me, I fell deeply into a perception of
our actions as identical to those of rats in a lab: press and take cash, press and take
cash, press and take cash. Spend. Press and take cash, press and take cash, press and
take cash. Work. Press and take cash, press and take cash, press and take cash.
Spend.. .
cybernetic capital
ultramodern
power
ultramodern
capital
cybernetic power
As I plucked’my $ f rom the metal lips of the machine, I looked up into the
video eye. Behind me, the next person in line removed her gloves. I now noticed the
plastic of the screen, dirty with fingerprints.
Serial numbers?
video record?
fingerprints?
check.
check.
check.
the owners of the lab keep very careful tabs on the rats.
cybernetic capital
ultramodern
power
ultramodern
capital
cybernetic power.
Zapatistas:The
RecombinantMovie
Ricmdo Dominguez
A
people mute and brave are better than a people cultured and abject.
Maria Ark
(Maria
Pistol)
at
Maderoigrave,
August 1914
I’m thinking of making
a movie
about
Oliver
all this.
Stone
Black Screen.
(A Virus voice speaks between spasms of white noise).
Virus: “Recombinant
politics calls for recombinant strains of disturbance at all
levels. As screenal narratives become viral narratives - a new matrix of critical
interventions
are beginning to emerge. A process of polyspatial democratic movements who use methods of electronic civil disobedience to counter the nomadic
bunkers of pan-capitalism.”
The words
“Rape
Culture”
appear on the black screen.
Cut to zoom-shoot.
(Jungle trail in Chiapas near Lake Pojaj. It is a hot night on October 26,
1995. In the distance one can hear the screams ofwoman being raped. It is
companera Cecilia Rodriguez, United States citizen and legal representative of the
EZLN in the US. Four laughing men surround her and kick her, one of them leans
down and whispers in her ear.)
Man: “You already know how things are in Chiapas right? Shut up then, shut up,
do you understand? Or you know what will happen to you.. .”
(On a jeep radio in the distance we hear an announcement
that Journalist
Fernando Yanez Munoz who was arrested on October 24, 1995 and accused of
being a high ranking member of the EZLN had been released. Yanez, who was part
of the Mexican rebel movement in the 1970s can be heard speaking.)
136
Digital
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Yanez: “I have no links to the EZLN,
though it would be an honour
for me.”
cut.
(A reporter in front of the Mexican consulate in California on October
25, I 995 interviews John Ross, who published an account of the Chiapas action,
“Rebellion From the Roots.“)
John Ross:“The Neo-liberal
agenda manifested itself, again, as a shaky prop that
always lives in fear of the truth. The Zapatistas without confirming or denying
Yanez as one of them, stated that the arrest was in bad faith and threatened to end
the peace talks. This caused the peso and Mexican stock market to tumble. On
October 25, 1995 the Dow dropped 50 points in the US. The day after Yanez came
out of prison the ‘bolsa’ and peso came up for air.”
“This is Zedillo’s most prolonged absence that he has dared to entertain since
he took office. The arrest of Yanez may not be a stupid blunder by the local police;
but that someone is out to derail the peace talks and embarrass Zedillo. The
possibility of a military coup cannot be ignored.”
cut.
(November 4, 1995 a communique
from the Indigenous Revolutionary
Clandestine Committee arrives via the WEB and is read by a group of people in the
cold basement of ABC NO RIO in New York. The camera pans the group.)
Group Member: “Third. The evil government is incapable of guaranteeing the
security of any person in Chiapas despite maintaining
dozens of thousands of
soldiers, whose only goal is to assure the impunity of the powerful.
Fourth. In view of the fact that the law of the evil government does not do
anything to- address these situations, the EZLN has initiated the work of finding
and taking prisoners those responsible for this and other similar aggression against
women in Chiapas in order to judge them according to Zapatista laws.
Fifth. The EZLN adds its voice and its actions to that of the thousands of
human beings who carry forward the demand for justice in all cases of aggression
against women. We call,upon all the men and women who, in Mexico and the
world, struggle for democracy, liberty, and justice, in order that we mobilize with
regard to this fundamental demand for all human beings: respect for women.”
Cut to black screen.
(A Virus voice-over
as the words “Speed Democracies!’
appear.)
Virus: “The disturbance of electronic bunkers with excess communication
is an
important act of radical emergence. The dissolution of informatic-economies
will
allow cells of electronic opposition-circuits
to create speed-democracies. The Winter
Palace is not being stormed, it is being dematerialized,
as a state in ruins and the
lines of flight lead towards liberated terminals. The Zapatistas accelerate the new
possibilities of fractal politics by displacing the signature-effect of Domain blockage.
Digital
Delirium
137
Spaces of information
must be disassembled and reconstituted as replicating
networks of decolonization
through the naming of free civil digital spaces. These
free electronic spaces will be constructed of excessive communication
and unlimited
counter-memories
- and no longer as part of the hyperamnesiac-hierarchies
of
information.
As a memo from the Rand corporation stated: “institutions
can be
defeated by networks, and it may take networks to counter networks.” To become
effective speed-democracies,
we must continue to puncture the smooth-state by
whatever means necessary.”
Cut to Cecilia
Rodriguez.
(She is speaking to a large gathering of people in front of the Mexican
Consulate in El Paso, Texas under a clear blue sky on November 12, 1995.)
Cecilia: “I know three Tzeltal women were raped at a military checkpoint, and three
nurses were raped and almost killed at the site of the peace talks, San Andres
Larraninzer. How many other women whose stories we do not know have suffered
through this hell? Women who have never said anything publicly because they fear
for their lives.
I have decided to make a public statement because I hope my experience will
illustrate the brutal nature of the low-intensity war being waged in Chiapas. I am
one more piece of evidence of the use of sexual violence as a weapon specifically
directed against women in this war.
I ask for justice - not from the governments of the United States and
Mexico because they are complicit in this war - but from the people of Mexico
and the United States. Look into my suffering and multiply that by hundreds of
women, men and children whose voices you do not seem to hear, who suffer on a
daily basis the humiliation
of a low-intensity war which intends to suffocate the
very human aspirations for democracy, liberty and justice.”
Fade to Black.
(The words ‘Rituals
Cut to a beetle crawling
of Chaos” appear on the black screen.)
over the remains
of a dead body.
(As the beetle moves in and out of the corpse, the Virus speaks.)
I&,:
“Fractal politics crashes the imaginary of total State command and control
with a counter-net dissolution which disrupts and erodes the hierarchies around
which institutions are normally designed. It diffuses and redistributes power to
dispersed cells who communicate, consult, coordinate, and operate on a polyspatial
basis, Between real events outside of the macro-panoptic
flow of data and excess
information
- counterhegemonic
disturbances spread. Netwar is most the effective
form of both defensive and offensive decentralized activism.
“Counter Intelligence Programs, COINTELPRO,
are being reconfigured as
anti-network
forces whose aim is to neutralize nodes that promote participation
in
engendering an ‘excess of democracy’ on both a local and global level. States in the
last few years have began to map out possible methods to limit digital autonomy:
Italy, an Anti-Crime
group shut down ‘BITS Against the Empire,’ a node on
138
Digital
Delirium
Cybernet and Fidonet; United Kingdom, The Terminal Boredom (BBS) was raided
by police; Germany, the State attempts to stop access to RADIKALL,
small antiState electronic journal; United States, several new bills (S390 and HR896) with
bipartisan backing are before Congress that would give full legal force to
COINTELPRO
actions against electro-political
networks; Senators Exon (D-NE)
and Gordon (R-WA) are pushing a bill (S314) that would hold internet providers
criminally liable for the activities of their subscribers.”
Cut to a hand picking
up the beetle.
(As the beetle crawls over a series of brown hands the voice of
Subcomandante
Insurgente Marcos is heard.)
Marcos: “In the mirror, chaos is a reflection of the logical order and the logical order
a reflection of chaos.
“I don’t remember the name of the movie (maybe the masters, Siskel and
Ebert, remember) but I do remember that the main actor was Peter Fonda. I
remember the plot clearly. It was about a group of brilliant Harvard students who
raped a woman. She accused them in a public hearing and they responded that she
was a prostitute. Their lawyer defended them by using their grades and good
families. They’re found innocent. The woman commits suicide. As adults, the
‘juniors’ look for stronger emotions and they dedicate themselves to hunting down
vacationing couples on weekends.. . after the standard rape, the ‘juniors’ free the
couple in the countryside and hunt them down with shotguns.
“I don’t remember the ending, but it’s one of those where justice is done,
Where Hollywood
resolves on the screen what in reality often goes unpunished.
“Today, the real ‘juniors’ have found that they have a country to play with.
One of them is at Los Pinos (the Mexican White House) and the other in Bucareli
(The Governor’s house in Chiapas). They get tired of playing DOOM
and instead
play at hunting down ‘bad guys’ in a game of real war in the countryside. They give
their prey time to escape, and move their game pieces to surround them and make
the game more interesting. But, the ‘juniors’ find themselves in a quandary, because
the game grows longer and they can’t catch the ‘bad guys.’ Then the US Ambassador, the lawyer from the first scene, tries to save them again: ‘It was just a game’ he
says, ‘the dead are not dead, the war is not a war, the displaced are not displaced, we
always wanted to talk and we only sent thousands of soldiers to tell the ‘bad guys’
that we wanted to talk.’ A pathetic argument for an ‘efficient’ Harvard government,
“Meanwhile,
reality approaches.. . and the mass media tries to impose itself
on reality. Forgetfulness begins to populate the government discourse; they forget
the fall of the stock market, the devaluation, the ‘negotiations’ of San Andres as a
window dressing to hide the true indigenous politics of neoliberalism,
instability,
jealousy and distrust, ungovernability
and uncertainty. They forget the principal
objective, according to Machiavelli; they’ve had no results, they’ve not been ‘effrcient.’
“In the mirror, chaos is a reflection of logical order and the logical order a
reflection of chaos.”
Digital
Delirium
139
Cut to black.
(“Fourth
Declaration
Fade into a painting
ZedilIo at his desk.
of the Iacandon
of Zapata.
Jungle”
appears on the screen.)
The camera pulls back. We see President
(“JANUARY
1, 1996. 12:Ol A.M.” appears on the screen. He stares into the
air as he taps his fingers and listens to the Reader.)
Reader: “The flower of the world will not die. The masked face which today has a
name may die, but the ‘word which came from the depth of history and the earth
can no longer be cut by the ears with its cannons.”
(Zedillo opens his top desk drawer and finds a remote control. He aims the
remote at the camera and the sound of the opening chords of a Dynasty rerun are
heard. He reclines back and smiles.)
“The arrogant wish to extinguish a rebellion which they mistakenly believe began in
the dawn of 1994. But the rebellion which now has a dark face and an indigenous
language was not born today. It spoke before with other languages and in other
lands. This rebellion against injustice spoke in many mountains and many histories.
It has already spoken in nahuatl, paipai, kiliwa, cucapa, otomi, mazahua,
maltatzinca, ocuilteco, zapoteco, solteco, chatino, papabuco, mixteco, cucateco,
triqui, amuzzgo, mazateco, chocho, ixcaateco, hauve, tlapaneco, totonaca, tepehua,
populuca, mixe, wque, huasteco, lacandon, mayo, chol, tzeltal, tzotzil, tojolabal,
mame, teco, ixil, aguacateco, motocintleco, chicomucelteco.”
(Zedillo reaches down and brings up a half eaten bag of Fritos and begins to
shove them into his mouth.)
“Ignoring Article 39 of the Constitution
which it swore to uphold on December 1,
1994 the supreme government reduced the Mexican Federal Army to the role of an
army of occupation. It gave it the task of salvaging the organized crime which has
become government.. . Meanwhile, the true loss of national sovereignty was
concretized in the secret pacts and public economic cabinet with the owers of
money and foreign governments. Today, as thousands of federal soldiers harass and
provoke a people armed with wooden guns and the word of dignity, the high
of&&
finish selling off the wealth of the great Mexican Nation and destroy the
little that is left.
“Three new initiatives were launched by the Zapatistas as responses to the
success of the Plebiscite For Peace and Democracy. An initiative for the international arena expresses itself in a call to carry out an intercontinental
dialogue in
opposition to neoliberalism. The two other initiatives are on a national character:
the formation of civic committees of dialogue whose base is the discussion of the
major national problems and which are the seeds of a nonpartisan political force;
and the construction of the new Aguascalientes as places for encounters between
civil society and Zapatismo.”
140
Digital
channel
Delirium
(An American
surf.)
Express Card commercial
comes on and Zedillo
begins to
“Today, with the heart of Emiliano Zapata and having heard the voice of all our
brothers and sisters, we call upon the people of Mexico to participate in a new stage
of the struggle for national liberation and the construction of a new nation, through
this Fourth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle in which we call upon all honest
men and women to participate in the new national political force which is born
today: the Zapatista Front of National Liberation.. . a civil and nonviolent organization, independent
and democratic, Mexican and national.. . and we extend an
invitation to participate in it to the factory workers of the Republic, to the laborers
of the countryside and of the cities, to the indigenous peoples, to the colonos, to
teachers and students, to the honest artists and intellectuals, to responsible priests
and nuns, and to all the Mexican people who do not seek power, but rather democracy, liberty, and justice for ourselves.. . We are here. We do not surrender. Zapata is
alive, and in spite of everything, the struggle continues.”
(Zedillo
implementation
ends his drift with the sound of Clinton saying that he supports
of the Clipper Chip 2 project in order to protect the people.)
Cut to a Mexican mural with the words
scrawled across it with a spray can.
“The
Hallucinogenic-State”
of
in red is
A slow pan across the entire work.
vj:, (voice-over): “Pan-capitalism
is a crack war of narco-colonialism
which
enframes the neo-liberal relaxation of exchange between the PRI party and nomadic
investment communities. The War-on-Drugs
is the main NAFTA artery of exchange for the Colombian
cartels of coke and heroin into the urban markets. Drugenforcement-economies
must command and control body-rights and land-rights in
Chiapas -this
foundational
drive of the hallucinogenic-State.”
Cut to black
and white
images of Oliver
(We hear John Tesh on Entertainment
Stone’s N&on
Tonight
in fast forward.
speaking, it’s March
25,
1996.)
John 23 (voice-over): “Mr. Stone will be meeting with Mexican rebels instead of in
Hollywood
for the 0 scars. Oliver Stone said he was thinking of making a film
about the rebels as soon as his finishes his next project. He also would like to meet
Subcomandante
Marcos. Edward James Olmos is also making a pilgrimage, so is
Lady Danielle Mitterrand,
and the rebels have just turned down a Benetton
modeling contract. Mary, who knew that electronic disturbances could be so much
fun!”
Cut to a still image of the Wall Street skyline.
(We hear bombs, gunfire,
and the screams of people in the distances.)
Digital
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141
Virus (voice-over): “Can the hallucinogenic-State
be resisted hallucinogenically?
Is
electronic activism a mirroring of State-logic as a tool for developing better counterinsurgency networks?”
Cut to a map of Southern
Attacks” stamped oh it.
(We hear Mr. Arreolo,
Mexico,
the words “Popular
a taxi diver in Hautuloc,
Revolutionary
Mexico,
Army
on August 30,
1996.)
. Arreolo (voice-over):
these people want
I’m afraid that the
anybody, not with
quietly.”
“They commandeered my taxi, but it doesn’t bother me to change the government, right? Well, I say I’m all for that! But,
police will accuse me of collaboration.
I don’t want trouble with
the masked ones, and not with the police. I just want to live here
Cut to a photograph
of soldier standing and saluting, with the words “Mexicans across the political spectrum say the rebels pose no real threat” stamped
on it.
Dr. fiteuez (voice-over): “They seem to have more money and are more heavily
armed than in Chiapas. They came fast and vanished even faster into the mountains
of Oaxaca. The fighters have the feet of peasants who work barefoot - but they
also had good boots -American
maybe. They spoke like Marxists, not like
Zapatistas - but, they do have the backing of the coastal peasants. When I was
stitching the foot of one of the rebels, a group of peasants brought them a case of
soft drinks, mostly Cokes.”
Cut to a can of Coke with,the words
style clothing here” stamped on it.
‘We often see people dressed in military:
Gonazlo Montoya (voice-over): “As the police commander in Tacambaro I know these
armed men who attacked the military convoy on August 30, 1996 were narcotic
traffickers. They all attacked military outpost in Guerrero and Chiapas. At this
moment we are arresting individuals on suspicion of being members of the group
and also those who are part of above-ground
peasant and worker organizations we
have identified as fronts for the Popular Liberation Army. We are going to try to
make a distinction between the Zapatistas and this new group - if we can.”
Cut to a computer
appear.
screen on which
(We hear a Japanese woman
screen.)
the words
“A call for a marcha
virtual”
read as subtitles in English scroll across the
Japanese Reader (voice-over): “Action Alert: October 7, 1996. The government of
Mexico has taken a rigid stance against the Zapatista Delegation travelling to the
National Indigenous Congress, threatening punitive action if the Zapatistas leave
Chiapas.
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“Mexican Civil Society has called for a ‘marcha virtual’ to show International
support for including the Zapatistas in national dialogues towards peaceful solutions to Mexico’s crisis. Given the fact that members of the EZLN travelling to
Mexico City are Mexican citizens, and are thus guaranteed by the Mexican Constitution the freedom to travel unencumbered
anywhere in the Republic, and given
the fact the Mexican government does not consider them criminals or terrorists,
and that the San Andres Dialogue, and the agreements which govern it, although
on hold, have not been broken, it is extremely important to pressure the Mexican
Government.
We are also asking that you forward this message to all lists, groups,
and individuals liable to participate in the this march, in order to show that we in
Cyberspace can mobilize to form ‘“war of the Internet” (Gurria dixit) in the service
of PEACE.”
Cut to a folded Mexican
October 12,1996.
flag and a single fuchsia
(We hear about 2000 people screaming
Then
rose. Beneath
them the date:
“the struggle continues”.)
on the top of the image thie words “Tzotzil
Woman
Arrives”
appear.
William Means (voice-over): “Commandante
Ramona walked out of the Lacondona
and into the heart of Mexico City. The PRI government did not want this to
happen, and on October 8 th ey even threatened to arrest any Zapatista that
attempted to leave the military cordon. Subcommadante
Marcos said, ‘she is the
most belligerent, aggressive and intransigent member of the Zapatista Army for
National Liberation and before dying she wanted to speak to other Indians.“’
Juan Cuelkzr (voice-over): “I brought my daughter to the Zocalo to see this small
fragile woman demolish 500 years of enslavement. She is a bomb of tenderness. She
is a bomb of patience. Beneath the ski-mask; my child’s future. Long Live Ramona,
Sweet Rebel!”
Cut to a black screen. The word
“Punctum”
appears.
Virus
(voice-over): “Commandante
Ramona is an event that punctures the bunker of
containment
as a trace of mourning empowering the ignored. She is a virtual line of
flight that names the real condition of fractal politics - death or the invention of a
new form of democracy. She is a virus for polyspatial systems of representation
which can disturb the telematic force of pan-capitalism.
Viva Ramona. The struggle
continues.”
Fade to black.
Hyperreal Serbia
Aleksmdm Boskovic
The refusal of the ruling party to recognize the results of the November 1996
municipal elections and the mass protests that arouse as a consequence of it, have
propelled Serbia into the spotlight of world media attention. Until recently, the
only media images that Serbs could expect to get were the ones of bloodthirsty war
criminals, since an overwhelming
majority of them wholeheartedly
supported
savage wars (by the Serbs and in the name of Serbs) that raged on the territory of
the former Yugoslavia between I99 1 and 1995. However, there is obviously more to
Serbia than meets the eye of the media.
Serbia is today the only truly hyperreal country in the world. Actually, along
with tiny Montenegro,
it forms a new, rump, Yugoslavia. The problem with this
Yugoslavia (offtcially known as “FR Yugoslavia”) is that it does not really exist. This
is not a view of some Serb-hating sceptic, but of the foremost Serb legal expert,
Prof. Pavle Nikolic. The legal basis of the “FR Yugoslavia” is its Constitution,
and
the current one, from April 27, 1992, is actually unconstitutional.
That is to say, it
was voted for in an illegal way by the people who had no legal right to vote for it. It
is almost as if I met with some of my friends in New Orleans and decided to declare
it independent.
We could, of course, probably write something that would resemble
a Constitution,
but that would not necessarily make our product a state.
Another point to be made is that the citizens of Serbia and “FR Yugoslavia’
still use passports of the former country, SFR Yugoslavia, a country which does not
exist any more. Its non-existence is proved empirically by the new countries that
were established as a result of its dissolution - Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and FR Yugohia.
Thus, through its claim to existence,
the “FR Yugoslavia” also denies the existence of the former country (SFR Yugoslavia), but still uses its passports, with the state symbols and coat of arms of a country
that simply does not exist any more. The citizens do not seem to notice or to mind.
Foreign countries still honor these strange passports. On the other hand,
international
institutions both recognize FR Yugoslavia (European countries have
full diplomatic relations), and regard it as a strange semi-existent entity (thus, it is
not a member of the UN, IMF, World Bank, etc.).
The attitude of the majority of,Serbs can be described as hyperreal as well.
On the one hand, the offtcial propaganda kept claiming that Serbia and Serbs were
not at war, and that they have nothing to do with wars. On the other hand, the
graveyards are suddenly full of men of military age, and there is a growing feeling of
concern and anxiety. As Baudrillard would say, the war never happened. However,
the consequences of the war are more than obvious, with the completely ruined
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economy, and the country on the verge of social unrest. Serbs are also facing the
image of themselves as bloodthirsty
nationalists as soon as they travel abroad. The
truth that the Western viewers had about the wars does not quite match the truth
that the Serbs had access to through the tightly controlled media. For example,
according to the Serbian media, Bosnians just kept slaughtering themselves, and
blaming Serbs afterwards. Serbs were always portrayed as the people who defend
themselves, creating strange situations when exalted TV journalists were claiming
(“live”) that “our brave defenders of that village are on the verge of taking the
enemy town.”
In everyday life, there is a growing feeling that the war (especially the one
against Croatia) has been lost. However, how can a country lose a war in which it
never participated? This creates some strange situations and a lot of anxiety regarding Croats as neighbors and Croatia as a country with which Serbia (as a part of FR
Yugoslavia) has fir11 diplomatic relations.
These frustrations and anxieties were certainly contributing
factors in the
mass protests on the streets of all the major cities in Serbia. The protests kept an
almost carnivalesque atmosphere, with lots of colors (flags of various countries, as
well as the Ferrari flag and the Japanese Imperial war flag), noise (whistles, horns,
trumpets, drums, etc.), and decent: rock ‘n’ roll music. At some moments, particularly during the protests organized by Belgrade students, it all constituted a mockery of the current Serbian regime and the police forces that have, since Dec. 26,
virtually occupied Belgrade. There is an unofficial martial law going on - with
police occasionally banning people from walking in the very center of Belgrade.
OIIicially, this is done in order to enable traffic through the center of the city.
However, in reality, police forces themselves are enacting the most effective traffic
blockade.
Although all the protests have been peaceful, this did not prevent police from
overreacting. People were savagely beaten, arrested (one young man has been
sodomized in police custody), and sent to jail for offences such as having thrown an
egg (with the duly noted fact that there was no damage inflicted). In the most brutal
police assault so far, in the night of Feb. 2, police were beating and arresting people
who had a whistle, wore a badge, or had a pair of sneakers. It does not matter what
you do in Serbia, it is much more important (especially when confronted with the
representatives of the law and order) whatyou wear. In the future, this might enable
companies like Nike or Reebok to advertise their products as being especially
effective in running from the Serbian police. It seems that one does not have to do
anything in order to be savagely beaten or arrested in Serbia. All one should do in
order to provoke thecforces of law and order in Serbia (who are equipped like
RoboCops) is to simply exist. As things stand now, the least that one could expect
from the hyperreal country is to be governed by a hyperreal police. Unfortunately,
its violence seems all too real.
Berlusconi is a Retrovirus
From the Italian theory-fiction nqvel
Lorenzo Migliob
The Holy Inquisition
(knowledge
a~ a form of extortion),
Nazism
(knowledge as ajrm
of indirect extortion,
ar an experiment),
Pal-Pot (knowledge
/u a
form of erasing/extermination
of the actors fir the sake of the scene) are pure and
simple tranSC$Dh'onS, horror vacui ha&ted
into horror written on the flesh.. .
Writing,
text oftbe unknowabk
translated
into horror of/on/in the fish.
Symptom
of a knowledge destined to go beyond the species as a depository
of that knowledge.
Mutation
is the batis of everything:
Its control is the purpose. The most
sensational
mutation
is &ah%: Is the control of mutation
aL0 the control of death?
A short summary
The novel tells the story of a group of sociologists who meet in a country
cottage to have dinner together, a reunion. As everybody knows, people like to talk
around a table and often play games, thus creating a parallel world with its own
rules, separate while at the same time simulating the external world. A sort of metaNoah’s Ark.
Keep in mind that the language/map of sociology has been fully overcome by
information,
which is too fast and therefore frustrating for it. While they are talking
they realize that they are tired of babbling. It’s time for action. A very particular
kind of action: similar to the pioneering era of cultural anthropology,
which evolved
from theory to field research, and the epic era of guerrilla movements that aroused
the romantic and pure hearts of millions of potential revolutionaries.
They call this
the Malinowski-Guevara Experience. At this point they develop the idea of simulating a (memetic) terrorist attack (terrorism being the essence of memesis itself., .
information
hard-core) against the man who better than anyone else represents this
symbolic, metaphoric and memetic media pornography.
Psycho-terrorism
that goes beyond science fiction as inspirational
carpet, as
nutritional
ground, but towards the theory-fiction
as ontological guerrilla, as if it is
a new pasture for research (a literary pasture).
A kidnapping!
Who is the Man?
How will they recognize Him?
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Towards the end, the sociologists, trying to go beyond their chit chat, decide
to simplify and organize their analysis by comparing the body of the nation to that
of a human being. Trying to isolate and define the primary infection (calling this
The A.1.D.S.m
Experience); the cause of memetic degradation into which the
nation is falling.
After a night of discussion they single out Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian media
tycoon. Berlusconi represents to them a real worldwide experiment of memetic
contamination
by means.of the media and politics.
The decision is made but.. . no longer tired of talking, words are becoming
molecules of a very particular drug, a sort of metaphorine..
. they feel like new
technopagan Gods, very powerll,
very memetically omnipotent..
. until dawn.. . it
was good role play.. . they say goodbye and the great veil of light brings back
order.. . removal.. . end.. .
This short pamphlet-novel,
,written in 1993, a few months before Berlusconi
entered politics, is still often quoted by the Italian Media. A sort of literary prediction. It was inspired by the need to give an interpretation
to what seemed like a big
push in the “quality” of mimetic (and memetic) contamination
of the relation
between media power and politics. The ineluctable ascent of Silvio Berlusconi: the
king of Italian private media and one of the world leaders in this sector, with
extensive associates and allies throughout
Europe and parts of the United States.
The style of the novel is like that of a continuous talk-show. The sociologists
do not appear by name, they are simply identified by quotation marks. The plot is
replaced by direct speech. It might even be a single person simulating many people;
a multi-character
personality, Hence the exchange is argumentative;
the subject is
deprived of any existence other than a linguistic one.. . pure code.. . symbolism.. .
literature mimetically and memetically contaminated
by television in an evolutionary-like replicant style.. .
Why Berlusconi? If ever memetics represented something theoretically or
analytically trustworthy, if the epidemiology
of memetic reproduction
means
anything, Berlusconi is certainly evidence for its viral character. The shift from
entertainment
to subtle publicity, from politics to subtle publicity, has transformed
a viral into a retroviral infection. It was in the early 198Os, Berlusconi’s era, that the
human species accepted a new standard of reality: retro-reality
(retromemetics).
Reality became more bizarre than fiction. All you had to do was imagine and then
describe it. In fact, it is through the fiction of his own media that Berlusconi created
a new imagery. A new principle of reality, agenda-setting for the masses. His own
television stations determine what we shall talk about in our country.
The big turning point of anti-politics.
Berlusconi is always repeating that he
sees the nation as a company. A bridge connecting liberal and virtual capitalism and
also a bridge leading to .classical fascism. He gave life and credibility to Mussolini’s
children and retro-fascism.. . Parliament was described in his own words as a useless
slow coach. He claimed for himself the hard core of power, again pure pornography; he could not tolerate the parliamentary
soft-core. He founded a companyparty, where his own presidency was not voted on by any internal committee or any
Digital
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147
other democratic means. His relations with people close to the mafia, with shady
politicians, with deviant masonry are put aside since the management of the
nation’s desire is potentially in his hands.
This memetic turning point was brought about by Berlusconi’s real-time
success, after he had been memetically contaminating
his political electorate for ten
years (1984-1994).
He received 30% of the votes two weeks after having put
himself up for election; apparently starting from zero, but in reality exploiting the
opportunistic
infection of his TV palimpsest (soap operas, faithful anchormen,
popular national shows, crude satire, ridiculous soft-porn etc.). Like unsafe sex that
now seems to have become popular with the clients of the prostitutes who come to
Italy in thousands from the East or Africa and who are then shackled and enslaved.
Among these the positive-serum has become the rule.. . the client wants sex without
using condoms, paying more, much more.. . a suppression of the instinct for the
immunological
defense of the species for the sake of pleasure.. . it’s the death of love
as evolutionary
energy, In this sense, a relationship between media and virology.
The central and fundamental theme of the novel-pamphlet.
The chapter reproduced here covets the moment when the sociologists
discover and define what they are talking about.
Berlusconi is a Retrovirus
,
“So then, I think we should reconsider the way we interpret everything. The
metaphor we have used so far is strictly connected to the parameters of physics as a
discipline, as an organization of matter. After years and years of overflowing
complexity - mentioned, experienced, spoken, defined - we still behave as if the
causal principle were the constant in the passing variable of a complexity that
someone thinks, and tries, to say in other, simpler words, if.. . then: a still-toomechanicist logic. Mechanically mechanic. On the contrary, we should be moving
towards a biological way of thinking; mechanics, yes, no way out, but organic,
organicist, mechanics. A more interactive, enzymatic way of telling stories, where
the author physically communicates and interacts not only with the reader and the
user, but also with the main character of the story. The kidnapped one, in this case.
We are pathological - not plastic - surgeons. This is the point of the argument.
Already many scientists studying complexity ate examining things in this perspective to understand and talk about them. It is our task to give this a concrete form.
Because at this point, owing to the speed we are moving at, we are forced to read
everything directly in evolutionary terms, place everything on Darwin’s microscope
slide and, why not, even on Lamar&s. It is now obvious that the slightest change
can alter the development of the whole human species, for better or worse provided good and bad are still meaningful.”
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“SO. . . Italy as a mimetic organism? Immunology,
metabolism, sensorialiry and so on - instead of the more traditional sociological categories? Metaphor and
allegory instead of statistical monitoring? Funny.. . then, to make sense we should
become eco-terrorists.. . this dinner is turning into a tragicomic D&D game.. .”
“Meme-terrorism..
. what if genetics became a pidgin?”
“I’m afraid we’re late here.. .”
“ . . .as I was saying, if we moved to this type of analysis, considering the State
as a real body - organic, anthropomorphic
and even anthropocentric.
Identical in
function and existence to a human being. Then we should have no choice but to
look for a disorder, the disorder of the body - a kind of symbol-disorder
- give it
a name, isolate it, and then find a vaccine and - if possible - commercialize it at
the libido level. . . ”
“. . .Lacan royalty payments.. . ‘we are always talking about neurobiology
. . .“’
“So, what should we look for? Homo Cancer? Homo Tumor? Homo Thrombosis ? Homo Leukemia? A homo sapiens who can turn an idea into something
living.. . use the vital energies of alien structures and convert it for his own use and
consumption..
. a wicked man, a man.. .”
“Satanic meme.. . I am the most malevolent person imaginable. The one who
shatters the sense of reality; ‘I invalidate and replicate it for my own purposes. Mine
will replace the species’. My egogenesis is the greatest, the I%llest, the most super.. .”
“Virus.. . we have to look for Homo Virus. The virus that invades your body
before you can spot it.. . the one that mentions you before you can mention it, that
looks at you before you can see it. That knows what you are going to be, before you
even have an inkling. The individual emerging from the bacterial revolution
revealed through the information
continuum..
.”
“The only pure viral form I can think of at the moment is God.”
“We, as humans, are at a sub-god level, molecules, atoms.. . our configuration
is small - little sight, slow hearing.. . but we can simulate higher configurations
and probably inform this heavenly matter.. .”
“Hey, wait a minute, we are talking of an informational
revolution, of the
numerical revelation of sub-matter, of media viruses; let us try to be practical - we
are not going to get anything out of it, otherwise - we are talking of men media-viruses we ought to fight against and destroy before they extinguish us. Well
then, there has been an evolution of the bacterial stock, of the virus population..
.
it’s like a mirror.. . a terrible evolution that could actually destroy the human species
in a few decades.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you.. . the Retrovirus.. . with the advent of the retro&s,
at the code
level, it is as if the Great Virus Nation, that includes all invisible creatures, had
synchronously
discovered both writing and interstellar travels - an incredible
evolution, a generational gap -whereas
the other viruses, the ones at the previous
stage, could just babble genetically predetermined
guttural sounds. It’s as if there
was a purpose, a grand design that simulates consciousness, teleology, finality. The
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149
global thinking virus, a sort of bacterial gaia. In this perspective, I think - and I
trust you will agree - that television is a retrovirus, it works like one. It is the one
and only means from which we can draw a useful analysis.”
“Go on.. .”
“Let us assume that every civilization, every century, has its own peculiar
disease as a metaphor of communication.
There have been the plague, smallpox,
cancer and now AIDS. And each of these super-epidemics has influenced the
imagination
of the particular century. Its own narratives and narrative modes, its
own perceptions and perceptive modes. What bothers me is that the Great Virus
Nation seems to go far beyond this, living a life beyond our perception, it does not
need our imagination
to be read.. . it does not live in our legends, myths, it affects
us like a pagan deity in 4D, a new reality principle.. . I will read you an extract from
a novel written in collaboration..
. A piece I found surfing the Internet.. . it contains some difficult and specialized terminology, but on the whole I found it
interesting and enlightening:
Dr. H was meditating on the words he had just read for the tenth time.
Something was waiting for him at the end of that mental exercise. Something
shapeless but less and less illegible. He knew the words by heart: in 1978, a decade
after the discovery of the Reverse Trascriptase effect (when a retrovirus infects a cell,
its Reverse Trascriptase immediately synthesizes a DNA mirror molecule which
corresponds to the virus RNA code. This mirror DNA makes its way to the nucleus
of the cell where it inserts itself, integrating amongst the genes of the host. A
marvellous mediologic and memetic trap! Genetics and memetics working together
in a viral evolution matrix), Prof. Ragaho managed to isolate the first human
retrovirus. He called it the T-lymphotrope
virus, because it manifested an attraction,
also called Tropism, for the T-lymphocyte - white globules that play a crucial role
in the modulation
of immune responses. It has been codified as HTLV-I. A few
years later other retroviruses were discovered, such as the second lymphotrope
virus,
HTLV-II,
in 1982, which can be responsible for leukemia. But the most disturbing
discovery was made in 1983/84, when they realized that the agent that causes the
acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) was one of these viruses, HTLV-III.
Why didn’t biologists understand what they had in front of them? Why didn’t the
ancient Greeks invent the steam ship even if they had fire, water and the wheel?
Maybe because they had a sort of veil in front of their mental eyes, an opaque
screen, a surrounding
body that confused the most important vision: this was the
Endogenous Retrovirus; i.e., what one often discovers in the genetic material of
many animal species as a residue of an old infection. All retrovirus diseases discovered so far are caused by exogenous viruses (they came from outer space!!). Exogenous viruses are of external origin whereas endogenous ones remain an evolutionary enigma. It was, once again, a matter of Visionary Perception, the art of perceiving the imperceptible.
The microscope was no longer good enough to reveal the
identity of the retrovirus. A new way had to be found. And a new means. This was
the first great intuition: the human vision of the time was unable to show us what
was to be seen. We had to become specialized in a new form of vision.
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Could retroviruses exploit a different carcinogenic mechanism which did not
require an extensive viral replication? If this was the case, then the electron microscope was no longer sensitive enough to pick up their traces. And clinicians had to
rely on the lottery of symptoms, on a relative, virtual interpretation.
Just like
marines under friendly fire, shooting at each other in the jungle while the enemy
lets them’get on with it, until they are weak enough to be finished off. An information war: those who can see know, and those who cannot see do not know. But the
problem was, the retrovirus went far beyond our vision, far beyond our ability to
read and decode. A new perceptive ability was required. But if the question is no
longer human, can the answer be such? And, not just any answer, can the crucial
answer still be human?
“There. . . ”
“Incredible..
. as if it was written for us.. . is there any more?”
“Go on.. .”
“Yes, there is another interesting passage.. . here it is.. .
And from the nothing of the existing, unread, ergo undiscovered, came the
Growth Factors, proteins that can stimulate the growth, in a laboratory, of other
cells, but are reluctant to do so. In vitro cultivation was ready to start. And it
became possible to discover that all the isolated viruses were not strictly related to
previously isolated animal viruses and that they were not endogenous but exogenous. Of course, owing to the peculiar issue connected to the HIV-AIDS
retrovirus, things got quite complicated as the Provirus (an intermediary
between DNA
and the virus itself) entered the cell as a clone mechanism - exactly like a classical
tumor in the acknowledged neoplasias - and this had crucial evolutionary
and
metaphorical
consequences: what most unsettled the minds of the first discoverers
was the lack of uniformity
in patients affected with ATL (leukemia of the adult Tlymphocyte).
In each case the viral sequences were differently positioned. This
meant there was an ongoing strategic super-evolution
on the part of the viral species
or their substitutes. The replizombie assumed a life of its own, just like those it
represented or replaced: the matrixes, the other organisms, living, organic, native.
Cloning was in a position to functionally
replace fertilization and this, taken as a
warning by nature for culture, was quite terrifying to say the least. Why is it that no
one said - nor is anybody saying now - what this retrovirus represented, as a
living and interacting model, in the evolution of our species on this unfortunate
planet?
“So then, you realize that if we apply these ideas to television, we end up with
some worrisome results.. . especially now that the electoral system is changing,
moving towards a majority system, so that whoever manages to start a reproductive
virus message, infecting healthy cells, that is, using DNA-television
networks by
way of a manipulating
RNA, the contaminated
trap message.. .”
“Yes, we were talking about leading personalities that can only be considered,
after reading such passages, as opportunist infections, but we have not considered
the real, fully developed viral stock, our national media HIV, the healthy carrier of
an infectious meme.”
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151
“It’s late and I’m afraid I’m too tired to follow this.. . what are talking about?”
“The one who is inscribed in the national DNA chain by way of a contaminated trap message, the one who has attracted and integrated the lymphocytes in
his own viral logic, the one who fully exploits influential personalities as opportunistic infections, in order to evolve from them, at the cost of other potential avenues,
sheer pornography. And now that he can even directly influence the election he is
on the point of inscribing himself in the central national DNA chain, which
reproduces the body of the nation with the features we can see. And once he is
inscribed, he will no longer use that chain to replicate a representative national
body, but rather to replicate his memetic purpose, that is to say, himself. Dear
friends, I’m talking of His Broadcasting Eminence, Silvio Berlusconi, the Monarch
of multimedia
retroviruses. A world wide test-tube. Our symbol, the new god’s
champion, we have found him at last.. .”
Translated
of Lawrence
by Marco
Baron)
Graziosi
(with
the collaboration
Notes for CTHEORY
Hakim Bey
Eternal
Return
In fractal mapping - like the famous Mandelbrot
Set, that supreme fashion
hieroglyph of the 1980s - the basic pattern keeps repeating itself, ad infinitum
apparently - the deeper & more infolded you go, the more it repeats - till you
get tired of running the program. After a certain amount of time, you might say,
the fractal appearance has been “theorized” more or less satisfactorily. No matter
how much more exploitation of conceptual space occurs, the structure of the space
is now a%jined for all practical purposes. Hasn’t something similar happened with
the Internet?
In the late 18th or early 19th century a group of runaway slaves and serfs fled
from Kentucky into the Ohio Territory, where they inter-married
with Natives and
formed a tribe - red, white & black - called the Ben Ishmael tribe. The Ishmaels
(who seem to have been Islamically inclined) followed an annual nomadic route
through the territory, hunting & fishing, and finding work as tinkers and minstrels.
They were polygamists, and drank no alcohol. Every winter they returned to their
original settlement, where a village had grown.
But eventually the US Govt. opened the Territory to settlement, and the
oficial pioneers arrived. Around the Ishmael village a town began to spring up,
called Cincinnati.
Soon it was a big city, But Ishmael village was still there, engulfed
& surrounded by “civilization.”
Now it was a slum.
Hasn’t something similar happened to the Internet? The original freedomloving hackers & guerrilla informationists,
the true pioneers of cyberspace, are still
there. But they have been surrounded by a vastness of virtual “development,”
and
reduced to a kind of ghetto. True, for a while the slums remain colorful - one can
go there for a “good time,” strum a banjo, spark up a romance. Folkways survive.
One remembers the old days, the freedom to wander, the sense of openness. But
History has gone.. . somewhere else. Capital has moved on.
Incidentally, in the late 19th & early 20th century the Ishmaels were discovered by the Eugenics movement, which declared them to be racial mongrels &
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degenerates. The Ishmaels were targeted for extinction; those who did not flee &
disappear were institutionalized
or even sterilized. The old slum was cleared & built
over, and the Ishmaels were forgotten.
Something
Borrowed
Something
Blue
The marriage of heaven & hell - that is, of the internet and television. The
net is pure, “out of control,” free & undefined, an autonomous space, a gnostic
pleroma. Television is infernal, fifth-rate heroin, spectacle of capitulation,
ceremonial voice of Capital, etc. etc. But now they are united - for example, in “pointcasting,” whereby a commercial server offers an information
menu designedjustfor
you - while highly produced advertizements run continuously
in one corner of the
screen (see? you can do two things at once). Soon the advertizements will be
designed personally as well. Home Shopping Network - that was the embryonic
form of the internet, its true “future.” But in fact the PC and the TV were always
already “the same thing” in at least one vital aspect: the screen - and the body
slumped before the screen.
Place Your Bets
Actually, the Internet has a structural aspect that makes it somewhat analogous to Capital: both in fact are fractal or chaotic systems - both have abolished
space and time - both are self-replicating
- both have reduced wealth to information - both are global structures (leading to conflicts with bordered entities). But
isn’t it a cliche to point out that any communication
medium is analogous or
mirror-like
in relation to the dominant cultural paradigm that co-evolves with it?
“When it’s telegraph time, it telegraphs.” And the ancient Persian postal system was
an exact map of the Archaemenian
Empire. Yes, these are truisms - so why should
we expect the internet to be an exception to this rule? How could there exist a
communication
medium outside the totality it represents?
Please Try Again
Later
The Internet as a tool for radical organizing - the Zapatistas, the
Scientology case, the McLibel case, etc. True enough - at one time the printing
press also had revolutionary
potential. So does the telephone, the fax, and the telex.
Each new technology as it appears seems liberating. The postal system, for that
matter, is still “out of control” - perhaps even more so than the net. Only a few
letters & packages can be checked, but “search engines” have now made it possible
to steam open every bit of email in the world (in fact the NSA is already doing it).
If I had secrets the last place I’d air them would be the WWW. The interesting
question about the Net was never its usefulness as a tool for radical organizing the interesting question was whether or not the Net itself could be seen as an area of
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contestation, as a “world” to be won or lost - or at least, as a strategic space. Clearly
the answer is: no, no more than any other communication
medium. For that
matter, why not try to “seize control” of language itself
Remans
Policiers
As Geert Lovink says, Capital has now made it possible for us all to be
“innocent”
again. After all, if the Movement of the Social is dead, if History is
ended in a burst of electromagnetic
bliss, it’s as if these botherations never really
existed in the first place. Free at last! - free of that deadly burden of knowingness
and belatedness. Now to plug into some real entertainment.
Never Happened
Baudrillard has decided that it’s all over, so much so that it will not even
come to an end! Not only does he quote the (ex-fascist) dean of pessimists, E.M.
Cioran, he’s even ready to embrace the “evil” - ready to spend eternity at poolside
in his mirrorshades (or is that just another 1980s hieroglyph?) - ready to capitulate. Baudrillard is no longer a critic of Too Late Capitalism - he’s a symptom of it.
The “New Innocence” is merely exhaustion.
Social Ecology
I’d like to be a luddite; smoking machines would gratify me, I admit it. So
naturally I’m distrustfirl of this tendency in myself. I pity the Unabomber
because
he’s made himself into the unwitting object ksron of a “real world” totality of
mediation & separation - living proof that we cannot bomb ourselves back to the
Stone Age.
But the next time some Chernobyl occurs, some Bhopal, some Love Canal 1
and the people (instead of swallowing it as “victims”) rise up and dertrov.. . what will
I think then?
And what relevance does this have to the Internet?
Off-line
“We’re all connected . . .!” The triumph of the Net, not that different from
telephone or TV - “reach out & touch someone” - “Be there!” - but not in the
body. On the whole, the values of connection between or among virtual subjects
appears outweighed by the deficit of actual presence.
The subject and object of Capital exists only in exchange, whether of information or money. True difference can only come into being outside or in opposition to this sameness; within the sphere of the totality all that appears as “difference” is merely simulation and packaging - a set of masks for separation. Since full
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contact can only occur between real differences, & since all communications
media
are mirrors of the totality that excludes such differences, it follows: that the contact
cannot take place “within” or “through” such media.
Of course this isn’t true! - the spirit bloweth where it listeth! Well then, let’s
say it may be statistically true.
Logging
On
Disinformation
- the internet as psychic swamp - disembodied egos information
vampires. “We have a Web page.”
What to ‘do with all these badly-designed
gadgets? If I put the PC into an
olde oaken cupboard, like rich people used to do with their TVs, I’d feel like an
idiot - but if I leave it in plain sight it offends me at every moment with its smug
space-age yuppie shape and designer beige plastic intrusiveness. I admit, these
feelings scarcely amount to a high moralground.
But please: let’s have no more posturing about “the next stage of evolution”
either.
Let’s talk about something else.
GrowingOld with
Negroponte
Duvid Cook
The problem of “real time” is that it is not. It is not real precisely because the
real continues its ride in the virtual lane where the non-event in unreal time haunts
it. Thus the nostalgia for the perfect real time weaponry of Virilio, whether God or
the Patriot missile, runs up against the entropic spectrum of “real time.” Who
better, then, than Nicholas Negroponte to put us all straight. Straight into digital
vectors where the time of your life can be had at any time of the day or night.
The Boom
is Over in Old Age Homes
Growing old together has been the sign of America in recline: a reflection on
the empire mentality of the imperial war machine.
As they always have, great civilizations come and go. American civilization is
now engaged in the “going” part which takes the form of a fierce struggle to shift
the time vector - preferably to the infinite enduring stasis of John Kenneth
Galbraith’s the “good life.“’ Nor has one given up on the fountain of youth, or, at a
minimum, health in older age which has done wonders for the American investment in old-age facilities. These homes and gardens, civilizations if you will, are all
the products of analog consciousness the epitome of which is the great American
monument
to itself - the television. As Negroponte has it: “Unlike young digital
companies such as Apple and Sun Microsystems, television technology companies
were old-age homes for analog thought.“* The vision of a greying America in front
of the television set is a reassuring one again witnessed by Galbraith’s The Culture of
Contentment.
Or perhaps one would even nostalgically prefer the America of the good
book, usually pictured beside a fireplace, complete with pre-digital citizens having
the last of the good reads. But that was before the world according to Negroponte.
As Negroponte states with reference to gardening and the problem of parasite
maintenance: “Think of a CD-ROM
title on entomology as another example. Its
structure will be more of a theme park than a book.“3 Books lose out to theme
parks, or maybe a better way to express it is that books become theme parks at the
moment they shed their analog existence and become digital.
In either case, immortality
is just around the corner once analog existence
with its constant deterioration
is replaced by the digital that has overcome the
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ravages of time. While perhaps not living forever, digital, at least, has the good sense
to end without a trace once the delete button is pressed or one is sent off into an
unknown address in cyberspace.
All that is Solid Melts into the Ground
What all of this has to do with life is, according to Negroponte,
the following. Life will have made its escape from the very vector that now creates it. The real
time world of the threatening “presence of being” can at the very moment of its
birth be nicely avoided. That is, the “now” of time present can, in a fit of Derridean
erasure, be indefinitely
deferred. Good news for bill payers, but, perhaps, not quite
what the world had in mind concerning the digital revolution. All this centers
around the broadcast vector. Current television analog vector thought is still
trapped in the physics of the ether. Looking to the heavens for one’s solace has been
the way of communication
technologies that broadcast through the air. In a
perverse reversal of freeway propensities, the air waves have become like the Beltway
- a standing-room
only vector. Not only is this quite dangerous because you might
and will be seen and you might and will be listened to, it is even worse as it has
become like the metro - crowded. The solution is, of course, to take to ground.
This results in Negroponte’s principle of what one might call the “Groundwork
for
the Metaphysics of Digital Mores”: “. . . what is in the air will go into the ground
and what is in the ground will go into the air.. . bandwidth
in the ground is infinite
and in the ether it is not.‘14
Here again is the bunker architecture of Virilio, now at the forefront of the
vector revolution that threatens an infinite bandwidth.
Demanding
Life of “Me”
The taking to ground of the digital bandwidth is also a taking to ground of
the individual.
For the bandwidth has, within its proximal zone, no internal time
consciousness. The Being and Time of Dasein suddenly finds with Being and Digital
that time’s manifold has lost its horizon. Finally emancipated from time, Being is
coded into the cyber-grid: a serial existence fed now, through the ethernet port, new
digital ether rather than the ether of classical physics. For Negroponte, real time, in
its digital mode, ends up being time deferred.
Digital life will include very little real-time broadcast. As broadcast becomes
digital, the bits are not only easily time-shiftable but need not be received in the
same order or at the same rate as they will be consumed. . . .With the possible
exception of sports and elections, technology suggests that TV and radio of the
future will be delivered asynchronously..
. On-demand
information
will dominate
digital life.5
Negroponte’s individual is completely delighted by this turn of events: digital
life as retro fashion files given on demand. A type of instant gratification
feed from
the gargantuan memory file. The culture of narcissism can now safely join therapeutic, medical culture, at least as long as one subscribes to America Online and the
Negroponte body is happily hardwired.
It is not surprising that Negroponte will then construct a new virtual self that
is immune from the intrusion of politics and sports, which he nostalgically exempts
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from going to ground. The self becomes fLlly described in the broadcast vector
space that he warns his reader not to co&se with the former analog narrowcast.
By the time you have my address, my martial status, my age, my income, my
car brand, my purchases, my drinking habits, and my taxes, you have me - a
demographic
unit of one.
This line of reasoning completely misses the fundamental difference between
narrowcasting and being digital. In being digital I am me, not a statistical subset.
Me includes information
and events that have nd demographic or statistical
meaning.h
“Me,” to use his charming italicized referent, would appear to Negroponte to
miraculously
escape (like sport and politics) the closure of meaning. Perhaps the
inference is too direct to conclude that for Negroponte there is no meaning demographic,
statistical or otherwise - to digital life. Or perhaps the political no
longer includes surveillance and wa.r machines, or maybe the marketing staff have
simply gone on vacation.
Negroponte is correct in at least one respect: the older statistical subset based
on the analog individual
is too slow for the world of surveyed selves. The statistical
lies within the spectrum of the possible limiting the vector of the virtual.
Negroponte
opens up the spectrum, recasting the individual
as the digital self: a self
ready to process the infinite bandwidth of digital corporations. Negroponte is the
“Installer” of the operating system that goes with this “Me.” If home seems far away
-for some nostalgia buffs, racial bigots, or fans of old ET re-runs, it is because they
mistake home for the real rather than the-virtual. “The address becomes much more
like a Social Security number than a street coordinate. It is a virtual address.“’ A
virtual address that quite naturally fits the security system.
And what about politics and sport that might just escape the net? Don’t
.
worry he was just kidding. We no longer have to worry about sport, given
Nintendo’s Virtual Boy. Negroponte himself took care of politics much earlier when
he teleconferenced
a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff through digital imaging
systems.8 An experience of the out-of-body
that appears to have put the Joint Chiefs
out of joint.
Notes
1. See John Kenneth &Ibraith, The Good Society: the Humane Agenda, Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1996
2. Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital. New York: Vintage, 1995. p.39.
3. Ibid., p. 72.
4. Ibid., p. 24.
5. Ibid., p. 168-169.
6. Ibid., p. 164.
7. Ibid., p. 166.
8. Ibid., p. 121.
Net Game Cameo
Deenu Weinstein und Micbuel A. Weinstein
The players of Net Game address the question df the effects of the
intemet on social relations.
I. New Age Cyber-Hippie
I deserve to come first. I’m the only one who truly loves the net.
For ages, human beings have dreamed of something greater than themselves.
With the advent of historical thinking, many began to dream of humanity creating
out of itself its own supersession - humanity as the frontier of cosmic evolution!
Now it has happened - the modern dream is materializing; humanity is being
overcome through its own development.
We are spirits and we are free. The net is OUT body and we - the authentic
netizens - are the next stage of evolution - beyond the all-too-human,
to the true
and the spiritual. We give our bodies to OUT spirits as our bodies give the earth, air,
fire, and water to themselves. We take the better portion. Our bodies serve the souls
that emerge through the interaction of souls on the net. It is a new level of being.
Not more “real” in some unknowable sense than the so-called material or perceptual
world, but, rather, its present perfection - some day in the future itself to be
surpassed but now the frontier.
Our future is the MUSH - the Multiple-User
Shared Hallucination
- in
which people enter a cyber-environment
and live out lives there as pure selves that
are constituted only by their interaction on the net. In the purest case, they will
never be able to find out who their fellow netizens actually are in the corporeal
world. The worst punishment that can be meted out is exclusion from the community, which is, of course, cyber-death. But then you could get a new account and log
on again, and take up a new life, even in the community that just excluded you, if
not one of the scads of others that are always popping up. Short of banishment,
there is only flaming and unresponsiveness. Your precious flesh remains unscathed.
Think of it this way: in the modem period you had a split between fact and
fiction, between history and literature, between experience and imagination.
Now,
on the net, what once might have been fragments of my personal literary imagination become participants in social relations and, therefore, become what they could
never have been without the interaction. Imagination
becomes genuinely social in
cyber-space. The Marcusian dream of transcending the realm of necessity into a
realm of artistic play is coming true.
’
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By choosing the spirit, I have liberated my private imagination
to enter into
relations with other imaginations
and thereby to be transformed. I can see a time
when the day will be divided into three parts. One part will be sleeping, another
part will be working (and much of that will be done over the net) and caring for the
body, and the final and most important part will be cyber-relations.
If automation
proceeds to the point at which the work day can be shortened, the surplus time will
be apportioned
to cyber-space and to conventional corporeal non-occupational
activities only to the extent that they are instrumental
to the enhancement of cyberrelations. We will sleep and dream and work and love corporeally and care for
ourselves as preparation for the time we spend in our cyber-communities
where our
better and best selves grow. It is not too much to say that the net is the nervous
system of heaven.
II. Net Defender
I find that I cannot agree with the previous speaker. Face-to-face friendship,
love, and colleagueship are the highest ends, not some overcoming of humanity. I
defend the relative autonomy and the value of a moral relation to and through the
net that is based on the objective possibilities for relations among individuals that
the net permits and, indeed, encourages, as what Jacques Maritain called an infravalent end; an end that has its own intrinsic value, but is also an instrumental value
to a greater end. Or, as John Dewey conceived of it, the best experience is one that
is both a consummation
and a means to future consummations.
The positivity of the net is its possibility of creating voluntary community
through mediated conversation. In a negative sense (in the Hegelian sense of
“negative” as abstract), the net abolishes physical distance between communicators,
making everyone who’s wired accessible to everyone else. In a positive sense, the net
provides a field for experimentation
(instrumental
activity) and play (consummation) that by virtue of its mediated character becomes free from the demands of
face-to-face or even telephonic relations, and, therefore, liberates expression and
encourages play with self-definition.
In return for the fullness of a close face-to-face
relation, we must sacrifice our abihty to vary ourselves and give vent to our reactions. The net’s particular form of indirect mediation encourages variation and
experimentation
in expression and conversation. That is why endogenous theorists \
of the net are nearly always both libertarian and communitarian.
At its best, the net is an array of voluntary communities
of inquiry and
comradeship sustained by the free commitment
of their members. There’s nothing
mysterious or marvelous about this. It boils down to people around the country or
the world who are caring for someone with a degenerative disease forming a
community
of support and information
outside the aegis of any medical organization. It amounts to people who share all sorts of common interests pursuing them
and also exposing themselves to disturbing interlopers bringing the bad news.
As a moral possibility, the net is an anarcho-democratic
community, It is a
mistake to conceive of it as a model for corporeal community and an abomination
to consider it a substitute for corporeal community, Think of it as a zone of freer
communication
than is social-psychologically
possible in other contexts, something
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like - though not the same as - academic freedom in the context of higher
education: a special opportunity
to explore, experiment, learn, and appreciate: a
special opportunity
for people to help and enjoy each other apart from the disciplinary discourses and practices of hierarchical organizations.
The net offers the possibility of voluntary community on a scale and with a
workability
completely unknown until now. Networking on the net and sustaining
the net as free and pure a medium for all messages as possible - consistent with the
perpetuation
of voluntary community - is the beach head of the New Left in
cyber-space.
III. Marxist Theoretician
I think a word from the old left is called for here, a good old-fashioned
Marxist critique and analysis. Things haven’t changed all that much since the
Manifesto. We still have to contend with utopianism.
Let’s retreat a bit from the wild-eyed, infantilist if I might say so, idealism of
the so-called New-Age Cyber-Hippie.
This collective solipsism of the net is merely
the fantasies of the technical intelligentsia of the computer-communications
complex. A case of organizational
psychosis (Dewey) and trained incapacity
(Veblen) - trained incapacity in the ability to think scientifically in this case - a
superb irony for an operative in highly rationalized technical networks. Technically,
the networks are rationalized. Ideologically they index the contradictions
of late
capitalism, which is destroying society to such an extent that people flee to computer screens for compensation and breed a crowd of ideologists who tell them that
they are pioneers in a new stage of cosmic evolution! Rather, they are waste products of capitalism, which is pleased to have them in their “alternative worlds” when
they are not at work. These are high-maintenance
kids put off to pasture on the net.
Sooner or later capitalism will find a way of taking those worlds of self-experimentation over. Until then a decadent and despairing young intelligentsia finds its own
devices of pathetic amusement.
Let us get closer to reality, to material conditions, by going back to the Net
Defender, who correctly places the net and its sociality into the sensuous experience
of human society, but remains a bourgeois individualist
by directing net community
to fuller personal relations rather than to revolutionary
praxis to transform actual
social relations, which is the only way to guarantee personal relations, which are
imperiled under the autistic consumer behavior fostered by late capitalism.
Our task as Marxists who are involved in the internet is to devise ways of
using its distinctive characteristics to best effect to further revolutionary
praxis. We
need to infiltrate cyber-space and learn to turn its conversations into opportunities
for political education. We need to get members of oppressed communities linked
by computer to better further their struggles against the system. We need to have
clearing houses of activist experience in all quarters of the struggle and our own
computer discussion groups on strategy and tactics. We need to link activists
around the world to be resource persons for each other, to share their experience
and knowledge.
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As we engage in revolutionary
praxis on the net, we will learn to appreciate,
through our concrete transformative activity, the new turns in human ielations that
the medium imposes and permits, and we will learn to make them ever more serve
our solidarity. But that solidarity will come as a reflective by-product of revolutionary praxis, not as its direct aim.
IV Net Promoter
Let’s get down to earth and get practical before we start soaring into thin air.
We have a very bright future ahead of us in America if we have the wisdom and
foresight and fortitude to do what’s necessary to bring it about. We who proudly
represent the emerging National Information
Infrastructure
(NII) are very pleased
that we have both the Clinton administration
through Vice President Al Gore and
the Republican leadership through Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt
Gingrich in our corner. We tend, on the whole, to favor the Gore approach, though
we share much of the Toflers’ vision, appropriated
by Gingrich, of a third-wave
society based on individual empowerment.
The basic point is that empowerment
will only come through the institutions that we depend upon to sustain our life on
earth: business enterprises, schools, hospitals, government agencies. They will
develop the discussion groups, support groups, and clientele groups that will sustain
individuals in their quest for individuality.
We say to the Marxist theoretician: Haven’t you heard? Communism
is dead.
Capitalism won! Capiche? Go play with your bulletin boards in cyber-space. When
it comes to the Net Defender and the New-Age Cyber-Hippie:
You, my dear
friends, are the cyber-incarnations
of the sixties’ counterculture,
whose self-indulgence has endangered our country severely. We’ll give you the cyber-space to play
your games. Who knows? You might even come up with things that we can sell or
apply.
Empowerment
for individuals and groups is what the information
superhighway is all about. The important thing is that everybody be connected and that
there be interconnectivity
among media. The goal is to give individuals, groups, and
organizations maximum access to what they need to satisfy their legitimate purposes.
Cyber-populism
will give way to an institutional
phase of the net as organizations learn to use the net in sophisticated ways for outreach and servicing. Eventually, organized players will offer management of an incredible diversity of
socialization situations and scenarios on the net. Support groups, common interest
groups, and chat groups will flourish under professional support. For example, I
read somewhere recently that a garden supply business had started a gardening
discussion group on the net. This is the wave of the future: organizations facilitating
socialization and therefore enhancing empowerment.
Empowerment
through
connectivity!
Vi Net(-Hype)
Hater
I’ve had it! Enough! Internet discourse: internet “spirituality,”
internet
philosophy, internet critical theory, internet policy - it’s all hype. This is the first
time in “history” that philosophy has become so completely enmeshed in promo-
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tion that the two are indeterminate
partners in a single discourse. The Bill Gateses,
Steve Jobses, Mitch Kapors are the hypesters and philosophers all rolled up into
one.
I hate the seduction of net-hype. I hate the seduction of the net. I hate the
virtual community as a substitute for the streets and the flesh. The fact is that the
net is an emerging complex of communications
media that has not yet reached its
full rank among communications
media and is, therefore, still “full of promise,”
breeding utopia and dystopia about it, and endless hype and vision: it can still be
promoted like land in Florida or nuclear power were in the 1950s.
Do I even care if humanity goes bug-eyed in front of screens, communing
with perpetual e-mail support groups, sometimes masquerading as newsgroups; as
they wait - as in a universal hospice - to be replaced by androids?
Don’t the technotopians
see? The internet as anarchy, that is, the internet as a
vehicle of academic freedom - the old ARPAnet that the defense department
created to expedite cold-war military research and was captured by the academic
side of the military-academic
complex - is a totally elite-utopian
moment; the
internet as anarchy is about to cede, as the Net Promoter knows, to the internet as
pan-capitalist
f aci 1ity. We are going through a doubling process, the internet is
being absorbed into the environing retro-modern,
pan-capitalist scene - the postpostmodern. Welcome to the retro-modern.
Darwinian
capitalism rides again on
the net. The net is passing from libertarian utopia to techno-capitalism.
You ask what the net will be? It will be continuous spamming. The net will
duplicate the fallen creation in cyber-space. From the net salvation doth not come.
Everything we have already will be in cyber-space in pretty much the same proportion as we have it through the media-scape. Basically, whatever you can make a
buck on will have its cyber-equivalent.
A certain number of people will be sucked
into cyber-space and become dependent on it for self-maintenance.
Others will use
it, among other media and relations, for self-maintenance.
Others will opt out at
the price of some exclusion from valuable practical and social connection.
Newt Gingrich was Time Magazine> 1995 Man of the Year. Newsweeki
competing issue declared 1995 the Year of the Internet and featured on its cover a
cartoon of Microsoft’s Bill Gates dressed as Santa Claus. There ain’t a chip’s worth
of difference. Two tech hypesters. Is there a message here about.hegemonic
media
and the future of the net? I’ve seen the future and it’s Newtergates.
VI. Cyber-Punk
Provo-Geek
Techno-Luddite
Excuse me, but you’re all full of (cyber-)shit. The net is more technology to
master in order to bring it down from the fuckin’ insides! I’m the Unabomber
hacking code. I’m spreading viruses everywhere - the AIDS of cyber-space. I’m the
cyber-punk Provo-geek techno-luddite.
I’ll use the fuckin’ net as a lonely-heart’s club where I’ll prey on whomever I
please, at whatever age, as I please. I heard’s great story the other day about an
elderly Jewish gentleman who disagreed with a Nazi skinhead on the net. The Nazi
skinhead, knowing no fetishism of the net, no taboos and sacred spaces, tracked
down his critic in perceptual space and threatened the Jewish gentleman with
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physical death, which led to said Jewish gentleman having to relocate to another
region of the country. Let them talk about cyber-space as something special - it’s
just another scam.
1’11hack you and jack you and smack you and whack you in every cyber way
and will hold you physically accountable for your cyber-personalities.
I am the Provo nihilist. Bring it all down from the inside. Eliminate all
boundaries between the net and perceptual life. Destroy the net. Threaten security
of private information,
medical records, and financial transactions in any way you
can. Break into data banks and mess them up. Falsify records. Use cyber-communities to draw the poor souls in them into humiliating
and exploitative relations.
Perpetuate misinformation,
disinformation,
rumor, and hate speech on the net.
Intimidate and humiliate with your flames. Bring the world and net together at
every opportunity
in calamitous an.d degrading encounters. Commit financial fraud
on the net and become a martyr to our cause if you get caught. Cause information
overload in the system at social crisis points.
We are avowed terrorists. Some day we might go to work for a fascist leader.
Hey! We’re in training. Our aim is to cause feelings of insecurity and danger about
the net so that people and organizations are as scared to go on it as suburbanites are
to walk through an inner-city housing project. We aim to make the net at least as
unfriendly
as nuclear power has become.
We infiltrate the net as techno-geeks and then become the cyber-parasites
that destroy it.
We’re going to make life as tough as we can for as many people on the net as
we can. The best way to show that something’s a utopia is to bring it down. We’ll
violate your email and use it against you. Some day we might work for large
organizations
as enforcers and disciplinarians
- cyber-torturers.
Perotistas?
Get a life! We intend to throw you off the h&n’
net by making it unattractive to you by any means necessary, whatever it takes. We hate technology and we
have mastered it - the ultimate cyber-punk horror story: the enemy within.
Memeticflesh is a floating outlaw zone where the delirious
spectacle of cyber-culture reconfiguresthe future of the
nano-body.
Memetic Flesh in
Cyber-City
Arthur und Murilouise Kroker
Memetic flesh? That’s the street scene in cyber-city: San Francisco, CA. Not
so much an ars electronica, but an Ars California: an art of digital living. Certainly
not a sociological rhetoric of evolution or devolution, but something radically
different. Memet,ic flesh as a floating outlaw zone where memes fold into genes,
where the delirious spectacle of cyber-culture reconfigures the future of the molecular body. In Ars California, memetic flesh is neither future nor history, but the
molecular present. Pure California Gening.
Now we just got off the Net where we experienced data delirium with the Ars
Electronica manifesto for memetic flesh, the one which speculates about future
memes: stochastic minds, recombinant bodies, info&in,
molecular daydreams.
When we read this meme manifesto, our bodies of flesh, bone and blood sagged
under the terminal evolutionary weight of it all, but the electronic sensors embedded in our nanoskin just went crazy. Like Alien 3, the electronic worms cruising the
blood lanes just below skin surface heard this call of a future technotopia, flipped
on their sensor matrix to red alert, whomped through the epidermal bunker,
zoomed out into fresh air, and were last seen heading straight for the California
coast.
And why? Because in Ars California, words are always too slow: the art of
digital life exceeds new programming
languages. Java, Perl, C++, awk, C shell these are always outmoded codes for better client/server relations. Spurning new
programming
codes and breaking beyond all the debugging barriers, memetic flesh
fast-fuses memes and genes, molecularly hardwiring
information
into the folded
vectors of softflesh. In SF, memes have abandoned the art academy, becoming
popular culture for the 21st century. Just listen to the street talk: a cool-looking
city-wise Chicano in Killer Loop shades plays Tex-Mex blues on his guitar while
wearing a T-shirt that boasts: “I’m a Professional Beta-Tester for Microsoft;”
a
businessman tucked away in an IBM suit, in-lines by while dealing mega-futures of
Intel chips on his cellular phone; an African-American
with a hi-tech futures face
gets into the elevator armoured in a red windbreaker listing the brand-name
icons
for “The Corporate Alliance of America’s Leading Cyber-Companies;”
a nanotechnologist begins to tell prophetic tales of the next human migration, the one
where floating slivers of the human species will be carefully wrapped in huge
nanofiber skins and allowed to float away into deep space, seeding the future
universe.
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167
Or we’re walking down a sun-bleached street in San Francisco right under the
Bay Bridge, and we see a beat-up Winnebago with a Nevada license plate. It’s got a
big sign out front advertising bargain basement prices on Java/Sun computer
packages. It’s a sun-real California scene: an old Winnebago,
hi-tech gear, harddrivin’ Silicon Valley type salesmen in a no-tech part of town, with no customers to
take their coffee and donuts and hi-tech packages except for some homeless guys
and ourselves. tier asking us “Which way to multi-media
gulch?” they realized the
error of their memetic way, and closed up shop just as a couple of street people
settled down for some good eatin’ and sleepin’ inside the chain-link fence. Memetic
flesh as daily life in cyber-city, the kind of place where the virus of the tech future
digs its way under the skin, like an itch or a sore or a viral meme that just won’t go
away.
No one knows this better than the memetic artists of SE Not the corporate
art of Silicon Valley, the “house” art of Interval, Xerox, and Oracle with their New
Age visions of wetware products for the digital generation nor the subordinated
aesthetics of the fine art emporiums in official culture, but unofficial outlaw art
that’s practiced in hidden warehouses and storefront galleries and ghetto schools
and other side of the tracks digitaI machine shops: an art of dirty memes.
Dirty memes? That’s what happens when memetic engineering escapes into
the streets of cyber-city, and its scent is picked up by viral artists. Like Elliot
Anderson’s multimedia algorithm, “The Temptation of St. Anthony,” with its
brilliant psychopathology
of obsessive-compulsive
behavior, complete with 3-D
ghostly images of emotional discomfort and stuttering gestures, as the key psychic
sign of digital culture. Or Matt Hackert’s dead horse flesh machines complete with
belching flame-throwers and whirring chain saws and rip-snorting
drills, and all of
this accompanied by the robotic sounds of the mechanical orchestra. Or Lynn
Hershman Leeson’s memetic cinema with its application of object-relations
programming to the universe of Hollywood
imagery. Or the viral robotics of Chico
MacMurtie’s ‘Amorphic
Robot Works” that encode in robo-genetics all the ecstasy
and catastrophe of the ruling cultural memetics. Neither technotopian
nor
technophobic,
memetic art in the streets of SF is always dirty, always rubbing
memes against genes, always clicking into (our) memetic flesh.
The NanotechFuture
A Digital Conversation
with BCCrandall
Arthur und Marilouise Kroker
Arthur andMarihise
Kroker: What is molecular engineering/nanotechnology?
What are some of the key emergent trends in nanotechnology?
BC Crandafl: Molecules are collections of atoms. Molecular engineering is the art of
making objects with molecular precision. The field is called nanotechnology
because simple molecular components are measured in nanometers, or billionths of
a meter. For the past two hundred years, chemists have done rather simple things
with a large number of relatively small molecules. Nanotechnology
aims to build a
wide range of quite complex micro- and m.acroscopic objects with molecular
precision. For perspective, consider DNA, which is 2.3 nanometers wide, or LSD,
one of the larger psychically active molecules, made up of some 50 atoms, which is
about one nanometer across. The field is just emerging from the coalescing efforts
of genetic engineers, chip manufacturers, and research scientists pushing around
individual atoms with their scanning probe microscopes to make raked-gravel
Japanese gardens with atoms and their electrons.
The key goal of nanotechnology
is the creation of self replicating molecular
systems that are not based on the mechanisms of DNA. The world envisioned
includes completely liquid environments with massive processing and robotic
capabilities. The equivalent of several thousand robotic Cray computers could
operate in a space smaller than a bl.ood cell. Materiality would be addressable atom
by atom.
Several traditional fields are becoming molecular and more will soon join
them. Computer chip manufacturers are beginning to toy with molecularly precise
components. Dr. Robert Birge at Syracuse University is working in the lab - and
in a start-up company - to create gigabyte memories smaller than sugar cubes
using lasers to “read” and “write” stacks of closely packed molecules similar to the
ones that register photons in our retinas. Drug manufacturers are using molecular
modeling software to design molecules that might lock or unlock a number of
proteins in an effort to more “rationally”
develop new pharmaceuticals.
Biology, and
all its sub-domains in anthropology,
ecology, forensics, medicine, and so on, have
all resolved themselves to view the world with molecular precision.
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169
Perhaps nanotechnology
can best be understood as a fairly new set of memes
with particularly dramatic material consequences. Our species has never experienced such a challenging opportunity;
the potential for losing our evolutionary
purchase on the planet is very real, as is the possibility of boldly carrying DNA to
where no man - and no woman - has gone before. But this will only be possible,
I feel, if we are able to substantially reconfigure major portions of human culture
through a process of memetic engineering.
A 8 M Kroker: Why is our future ‘memetic
engineering?”
Crandall: The term “meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976. A “meme” is
a piece of patterned information
carried and expressed by a human brain, just as a
“gene” - which rhymes with meme - is a piece of patterned information
carried
and expressed by DNA. By taking in that last sentence, you become infected with
the meme about memes. Memes are a new form of self-replicators, or viral life.
They are atomic and molecular fragments of human “culture.” Memetics is very far
from the “mimetic” judgment Plato passed on materiality - that it consists of poor
imitations of “True Forms.” Memetics is the antithesis of metaphysics, insisting that
matter matters. Felix Guattari performs a kind of memetic analysis when he argues
that a wide range of heterogeneous machinic components lead to the production
of
contemporary
subjectivities.
As material structures, memes are always on their way, transformationally,
from medium to medium: speech vibrates air molecules that, if near an ear, enter
the brain through the tuning forks of the inner ear and thus into more or less stable
molecular patterns in the brain. Memes express themselves through the mouth, as
words and song, through the hands -which
have learned to use a growing range
of signaling tools from paintbrush and keyboard to trumpet and fax machine -’
and through other “significant”
gestures. Today, memes exploit the new media and
travel as electronic and electromagnetic
pulses and hibernate as magnetic patterns
and as microscopic pits on laser-read compact disks.
Memetic engineering is the art of intentionally
creating, nursing, annealing;
and projecting an evolving matrix of these meat-based “ideas.” Memetic engineering can be found at the core of contemporary
techno-corporate
communication
apparatuses as well as at the heart of Buddhist literature -wherever
“effective
means” are used to infect the flesh of a reader, listener, or viewer with a given
meme. These processes of “teaching” and “learning” - intentional
memetic
transfer - generate “human” culture. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that,
“Memes are us.” To the extent that we participate in language, economics, history,
or aesthetics, we inhabit a memetic realm. Using the energy of our living flesh to
maintain, mutate, and express themselves, memes live in and through us. Their viral
activity generates our hallucinated identities as “individuals.”
You can identify the
memes living in your flesh by inventorying
your identities: If you call yourself
“Christian, ” “Marxist,” or “Postmodern”
- or “Musician” or “Writer” - you do so
because your body carries and expresses particular strains of memetic culture.
We are facing a crisis because the set of memes that can be identified as the
ongoing technoscientific
revolution is evolving with completely unprecedented
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success. Never before have the stories we’ve told each other about the world - the
memes - had such capacity to rearrange the matter of the world. As the technological phylum discovers how to install itself as an evolving molecular presence, our
animal survival depends on discovering the memes that we can live with. Without
an effective methodology
for discerning and modifying memetic forms our future
looks quite bleak. Currently, the enacted consequences of the memes that we carry
are causing the greatest reduction in species diversity on the planet of the past 60
million years. Leaking radioactive waste, lethal for hundreds of thousands of years,
pockmark the “civilized” world. And soon we will face the prospects of genetically
targeted molecular machine viroid.s!
As we “hack the future” with ever more powerful tools in our primate paws,
we must continually
re-engineer our memes so they inspire us to ever gentler
action. Or perhaps another image - another meme - would be better, for we
need to cultivate, nurture, and husband a garden of genetically beneficial memetic
life forms.
A &M Kroker: In your new book, Nanotechnology: Mohdar
Speculations on Global
Abundance, you claim that we stand at the “threshold of a molecular dawn.” Why
do you think the future is molecular? And what will be some of key concrete results
of the “molecular dawn”?
Cranciall: Our future is molecular because if we do not take molecular care we will
not be materially alive, and that brings all our fine conversations - political,
philosophical,
spiritual, economic - to a graceless halt. Conversely, if we can
conjure up a skeleton key that will allow us to pass us through the molecular gate,
and we find ourselves living amidst molecularly precise artifacts as cheap as dirt, the
imagination
of millennia - the madness and laughter of our species - will leap
forth, generating incomprehensibly
complex patterns of human becoming. Some of
which, I imagine, may be quite enjoyable.
In the book, I present an historical argument that it is actually quite reasonable to anticipate the arrival of surprisingly powerful molecular machines in the
next few decades. The contributed pieces in the book present technically sound
speculations on several potential applications. These range from the blessedly
mundane - diamond teeth - to “utility fog,” which would support you in an
essentially liquid environment
tha.t could simulate almost any occurrence with full
resolution at the limit of human sensory instrumentation.
In fog, one might assume
that every sensory impression would appear with a corporate logo in the lower
right-hand corner. A suit of utility fog - while stimulating your senses - could
carry you across the surface of the earth quite rapidly and, with a few modifications,
could generate within its bulk a sufficient quantity of microscopic vacuum pockets
to make the entire apparatus - with you inside - lighter than the atmosphere that
it displaces; you’d bob up to the top of the atmosphere like a champagne cork
released from the Titanic. Such a universal human-machine
interface could act as a
second skin and as the fundamental medium of “communities.”
Those who share
protoplasmic
extensions of a given liquid envelopment - each “individual”
a raisin
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in a digital tapioca pudding - could be in constant, broadband, full-body
nication. (Parenthetically,
the Latin-rooted
“individual”
is the etymological
lent of the Greek-rooted
“atom”; both mean “indivisible.“)
A &ME&X
You co-founded a computer
Is that related to your work with Molecular
company,
Realities?
Prime Arithmetics,
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commuequivain 1990.
Crandall: Prime is based on the mathematical research of my cofounder Jack
LeTourneau, who has shown that there exists a unique isomorphism between the
natural numbers under the operations of “primed-r” and “times” and hierarchical
structures under the operations of “encapsulate” and “merge at the root.” This
discovery has allowed us to develop a family of arithmetic techniques that are
particularly
efficient for describing and manipulating
object oriented data structures. These techniques, which have just recently been partially approved by the
PTO [Patent and Trademark Offrice], have immediate applications - especially in )
the area of network-based computing, where a number of small digital “objects” are
drawn into temporary assemblies as needed - and in the molecular world we will
soon inhabit.
In particular, it’s clear that cellularization - the process of grouping molecular components into increasingly complex assemblies - has provided DNA life
with one of its most fundamental
techniques for generating ever more capable life
forms. An efficient method for modeling the aggregation and evolution of objectoriented systems will have value, I believe, as we begin to create molecular mechanical instanciations of artificial life forms. I also imagine that whatever “Global
Algorithms”
are used to effect the next transformations
of the planet, they will need
data structures and data-structure management mechanisms. Prime offers a mechanism that’s as universal and as “natural” as the natural numbers: zero, one, two,
three, four, and so on.
A &M Kroker: In Nanotechnofogy you state: “Nanotechnology
poses a difficult
question: What will we human primates do when some of us learn to manipulate
matter as finely as the DNA and RNA molecules that encode our own material
structure?” Now, we know that some of the early adopters of nanotechnology
will
be multinational
drug companies who intend to apply to molecular engineering the
same war-like strategies that they have already applied to the pre-nano world. Is
nanotechnology
doomed to recapitulate the often violent history of modern
engineering, or does the possibility exist that memetic engineering may have a
heretofore silent ecological ethic. In other words, is there a “Green
nanotechnology?”
Crandall: There must be, or we will not long survive. Technology, as Heisenberg
pointed out, is a fully natural phenomenon.
He called it “a biological process on the
largest scale.” If this is the case, it is not a question of managing our technology in a
kinder gentler manner, but rather one of ridding the global orgasm that is shuddering its way across the planet. Our choices seem to be encouraging this thundering
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undulation
in the direction of birthing a multitude of post-planetary, DNA-life
colonies, or dully observing its crescendoing explosion in place - an event that I
do not believe will be very hospitable for our delicate hominid flesh.
In the next few decades, with the development of nanotechnology,
a window
of opportunity
will open, during which we will be able to use early applications of
molecularly engineered materials to launch a multitude of substantial, ecologically
self-sustaining - and primate supporting - ecosystems into the previously
untenable ecological niche of space. These colonies would provide new homes for
DNA with one essential characteristic: complete molecular separation from one
another. While terrorism and stupidity are likely to remain serious challenges, the
void of space would serve to separate the various attempts to generate viable
memetic and genetic cultures with human-directed,
molecularly precise interventions. If one colony failed, the whole game wouldn’t end. Currently, we know of
,only one molecularly interconnected
DNA experiment: the Earth. For as long as we
fail to multiply the instances where DNA life can continue its four and a half
billion years’ exploration, we face an ever increasing risk that molecularly machined
artifacts generated by one species of DNA life will accidentally destroy the planet’s
capacity to support primates, and potentially its capacity to support all forms of
DNA.
The “ecological ethic” inherent in nanotechnology
emerges when we realize
that it is indeed the end of the world as we know it. When groups of humans gather
together - with the intention of forming self-sufhcient, molecularly independent
communities
of DNA life with pkms to leave the Earth at the earliest opportunity
- it will be on the basis of an understanding
that individual, bodily health and
well being is utterly dependent on the ecological vitality of the place you call home,
be it San Francisco, Berlin, Jakarta, or a centrifugally spinning necklace of Earth-life
pods in near-Earth solar orbit. How such communities will form and the manner in
which they will sustain themselves is the question that I am most interested in at
this time. Clearly, this is fundamentally
a question of memetic evolution.
Today, the deterritorializing
memes of capitalism will continue to distract us
from the primary pleasures of the meat - breathing, moving, eating, touching with a growing blizzard of secondary representations, in an effort to constantly
maximize return for the “owners.” In this storm of accelerating combinatoric
culture, it is critical that those of us interested in surviving begin to practice some
form of memetic annealing - a kind of cybercalisthenics for domesticated primates
in reclining civilizations. The goal of annealing is simple: remember that “Everything you know is wrong,” or “The map is not the terrain,” or whatever aphorism
stands in your matrix as the navel, the omphalos, the Klein-bottle
point at which
“you” disappear. While Buddhists and others have developed a wide range of
activities to induce such an experience, the event itself is utterly natural: meat
returning to meat. This saturnalia of the soul which deconstructs the dominant
hallucination
in a temporary conflagration
allows one’s current set of memes to
reorder their relationships. One is “reborn” - as yet another memetically infected
ape.
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173
Annealing becomes particularly important as we are ever more likely to find
ourselves in molecularly altered states of consciousness.While certain psychedelics
and alcohol are older than cities, most of us, including those of European descent,
have had lessthan 400 years to adapt to the molecular intrusions of caffeine and
nicotine on our brain meat. Prozachas been with us for only twenty-two years, and
it passeda billion dollars in saleswhen it was only eighteen - the year Zolofi was
born. Each of these molecular regimes, these postmodern material gods of consciousness,effect the beliefs and values - the memes - that guide our actions in
the world. Avital Ronell’s image of receiving a “six-month girloid program” as a
molecular implant, and Neal Stephenson’squestions, “Is it a virus, a drug, or a
religion? -What’s the difference?” point to the criticality of waking up to the
material - the molecular - nature of the memes we each host.
Given this hmdamental materiality, it is clear why memetic annealing always
proceeds as an activity, a movement of the flesh. Whether the gross movements of
dance or yoga, or the subtle movements of conscious breathing and mindful
attention, annealing invites our meat to choose: what activity, what belief, what
memes feel best for this meat right now? Nietzsche suggested that one sit as little as
possible, and argued that we should “give no credence to any thought that was not
born outdoors while one moved about freely.” By taking the fundamental creative
act - drawing a distinction - and handing the baton to our breathing, feeling
flesh, we just might be able to choose and construct memetic forms that will allow
the dance of human and DNA life to continue.
Requiem
&thy Acker
Act III
Scene I: ELectrai monologue. E&ctra enters andsits cross-legged upon the stage.
Just the actress, no need to dress up anymore. Itjpresent time.
Electra: I’m gonna to tell you about myself. (A little like a
kid) I’d been working with this woman who knows how
to access past lives. When I found out that I had cancer,
a cancer that had metastasized, I ran to her for help.
why?
For this reason: When the surgeon who had taken my
breasts off, a few days after this operation, informed me
that some of my lymph nodes were registering cancer, I
asked him if the lymph nodes or the body’s oil filter
could simply be registering cancer because I was on a
high anti-oxidant
diet. I had been for some weeks.
(Picking at her feet.) He answered me that diet has
nothing to do with cancer, with the causes of cancer. He
added, “Nor with environmental
pollution. We have no
idea,” said my surgeon, “what causes cancer.”
’
50 I decided that he knew nothing about cancer. I had no
idea why I was deciding this. ‘I knew I had to find out
who did know about cancer. But I knew I had no way of
knowing how to find out.
Everything I had though,t real had just been taken away
from me.
I ran to George, my psychic. I told her everything that had
happened, that the surgeon was good-looking.
Like
President Clinton. I guess they’re in the same racket, I
Editors’ Note: Kathy Acker’s Requiem was commissioned
Ken Wit&y
is the composer.
by the American
Opera Projects,
New York.
Digital
Delirium
said. George replied that I shouldn’t be scared. She
would send me to someone who kills cancers. Who had
killed several for her.
I was alone again and everything that was happening so
fast ran through my brains. I could only think about was
killing cancers. If I can kill the cause of this cancer-this
was my thought-the
cancer that’s in my body will go
away.
I didn’t know, however, if phenomena happen by chance or
by cause. Now, if things, phenomena happened by
chance, then nothing that I did or could do mattered,
that is, there was no way I could know what action led
to what other action or event. In other words, if chance
ruled the world, then my surgeon was right: cancer had
no discernible cause and my life and death were meaningless.
I can’t bear this.
It was at this moment something, I don’t know what word
to use, came out of me, someone larger in than me, and
screamed without raising my voice, using a calm tone,
“No more of this death. You’ve fucked everything up so
now I’m taking over.” It was a male voice. I felt that my
conscious section was just a part of a huge being.
If this world is meaningful, I continued, then so must be
each of its parts, no matter how minute. If this world is
meaningful, then I need to concern myself, not with
cancer, but with its cause. Whatever caused it must
change. I knew one thing. That writing is a way to
change reality. I returned to George in order to find out
how I could change reality.
But I was very scared: the growing fear that I felt was so
great that it seemed just about to take me over. I was
about to stop being.
Again George said that I shouldn’t be frightened. Why
was I? I didn’t understand this question cause I thought
that the fear of dying was enough to frighten anyone.
Had I ever been scared before I had gotten cancer?
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“Yes.” I said this; then I thought. When I had been six
years old, I guess it was six cause I don’t remember
anything that happened before that time, I had been
taking a shower. My mother entered the bathroom. I
didn’t know she was in there because I couldn’t see her
through the shower curtain. Just like Psycho . She threw
ice water on top of me. She had already placed a bar of
soap on the floor of the bathtub.
It was a game. If I can remember playing these games like
this with my mother, why can’t I remember anything
that happened before I tias six years old?
’
Scene 2: Light opens up to reveal a level,, small study in tan. Most of the wa1.h are
huge ckar windows through which can be seenj&l/grown
trees, tiny budr, branches,
birds bopping here and there, maybe even a squirrel. The sun is clear and strong.
Electra, dressed in the actress’ normal clothing, and George are sitting in two of
the three comfortabk armchairs. George looks like a beauttjd Hollywood actress slightly
past her prime; in a way she is, for she used to be married to a well- known American
film producer.
Thq, are already in conversation.
Electra: So I went to this dingdong doctor and she made
me hold vials of different cancers in one hand while her
hands tapped and sort of moved my feet. She said, “You
don’t register at all for breast cancer.” “Maybe I’m
cured.” “ But you have six other kinds of cancer.” I think
I’d know if I was growing every conceivable kind of
cancer.
George: Forget about her.
Electra: While I was holding each group of vials, there were
fourteen, she told me to hold the thumb of my other
hand, for each test, against a different finger. Each time
my thumb touched my third finger, she found all these
really bad emotions. She named each emotion, then told
me to think about it and hit the base of my skull with
that tool they use to adjust backs. A “clicker” or something or other. As soon as my head really hurt.
I told her I had thought
George:
about the emotion.
Don’t see her again.
‘Electra: The most usual emotion was anger. I want to learn
about this cause I don’t think I’m angry with my mother.
I’ve worked on forgiving her.
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George: You must have been angry at her for what she did
to you.
Electra: I don’t know, but I don’t know how I felt before I
was six.
George: What’s the first thing that you remember?
Electra: I do remember one thing
was six. I was about a year old.
blanket with roses. I adored it.
me. They said they were taking
never got it back.
that happened before I
I had this pink baby
They took it away from
it away to clean it, but I
George: Now, be a child. Sit in a chair or on the floor as if
you were a child.
Electra: George. (Readily sitting down on thefloor,
awayfiom the reJt of her body) This is silly!
her legs
George: What toy do you want?
Electra pouts.
George: Would
you like a stuffed animal?
Electra: I like stuffed animals.
George, (banding her a pig wuhoi hugging a 6aSypig and a
mauled bear) : Which one?
Electra: Both.
George: Go back to that blanket. To it being taken away.
Where are you?
Electra: I don’t know. (She closes her qes) A bare room.
Grey walls. I see a crib. I can’t see anything else.
George: Who’s taking your blanket away?
Electra: They are.
George: Your grandmother?
took care of you.
She’s obviously
the one who
Electra: My mother, my grandmother. They’re one and the
same. They’re the only people in this world.
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George: What about your nurse? You said you had nurses.
Electra: I adored my nurses. It was my mother
grandmother.
or my
George: What do you feel?
Electra: I’m really angry.
George:
Do you show your mother you’re angry?
Electra: No. (7%.&s)
have dared.
George: Why? Children
they feel.
My mother was a monster. I wouldn’t
usually show their mothers how
Electra doesn’t answer.
George: What were you so scared she was going to do to
you?
Electra, her voice changing: I tell you: I’m blocked. I’m
blocking. (Her Sody is rigid and she; in pain) I’m trying
to think of what I’m most scared of. Lobotomy. (Reasons)
They’re going to make me into nothing. To make me a
puddle so I can be just what they want. Then I’ll no
longer be. That was what their society was to me: The
fifties and the sixties. Hypocrisy.
George:
I don’t understand.
Electra: I was constantly supposed to say to my mother, “I
love you”. I wouldn’t because I didn’t know if she loved
me. My father would say, “Why don’t you tell your
mother you love her? She loves you so much.” I was
guilty When I was six, I would tiptoe up to the doorway
of their bedroom, it was always late at night. I could hear
them talking about me. My mother said that there was
something bad about me which genetics couldn’t
account for and my father would agree. He agreed with
everything she said. They talked about how maybe I
should be instituted.
George:
How did that make you feel?
Digital
Delirium
Electra: I was unlike everyone in the world. I decided I was
a freak. So my mind made up another world: that’s when
I began to live in the imagination.
George: But what had so frightened
you?
Electra: I can’t remember back then cause I’m scared to.
(Making hers@ I’ve got to remember because I have to
cure this disease.
George: Go back further.
Electra: I’m trying. I’m going to look at my fears. Lobotomy. Fire. I’m terrified of fire. Which doesn’t make
sense cause I’m basically fearless: knives, guns don’t
bother me; when I was a kid, I used to jump off the
boardwalk over the beach. It was high.
George: Why are you scared of fire?
Electra shrugs.
George: If you were badly burned during
have a scar.
childhood,
you’d
Electra: I don’t have a scar. I’m scared of fire.
George: Let’s go back to lobotomy.
want you to be you.
Your mother doesn’t
Electra: She wants me to be really dumb and get C’s on my
report card. She hates how bright I am.
George: She doesn’t want you to exist.
Electra: She’s always tells me that. That she would
gotten an abortion if she hadn’t been scared.
have
George: She tried to kill you.
Electra: I don’t remember.
(Blohing)
Let’s ask the healers.
George: Dear healers, please be with us ,now and answer
my and Electra’s questions about her mother. Did
Electra’s mother try to kill her?
Electra is sitting in her chiI.& position, rigid.
179
Digital Delirium
180
George: Yes.
Did Electra’s mother try to burn her when she was a
child?
No.
Did Electra’s mother try to kill her before she was born?
Yes.
When she was three months in the womb?
When you were seven months in the womb, your
mother tried to abort you using something to do with
heat, a method common in those days.
Electra: I know this.
George: The abortion didn’t work because you were meant
to be born. You were helpless when all this happened.
That’s why you’re scared.
Electra: What do I do?
George: May you go back to
your mother tried to abort
so that she can grow up in
Give her the help that she
to do what she has to do
while alive. Amen.
that child who existed before
her,
love.
needs
Electra sings in a clear, strong child5 voice:
Requiem
“who, if 1 cried out, would hear me among
the angels?”
I know the answer:
no one.
Tell me: from where does love come?
An angel is sitting on my face. To whom can I run?
Take me in your arms, death,
I’m so scared;
do anything to me that will make me safe
while I kick my heels and shout hut in total fear,
while we hurtle through your crags
to where it’s blacker:
Orpheus’ head eaten by rats,
what’s left of the world scatt’ers,
in the Lethe the poet’s hairs,
Digital
below where there’s no ground, down
into your hole,
because you want me to eat your sperm.
Death. I know.
“Every angel is terrifying.”
Because of this, because I have met death,
I must keep my death in me,
gently
and yet go on living.
Because of this, because I have met my death,
I give myself birth.
Remember that Persephone
raped by Hades
then by him brought
into the Kingdom of Death
there gave birth
to Dionysius.
You were the terrorized child,
Mother,
Now be no more.
Requiat in pacem.
Tell me: from where does love come?
“Emerging at last from violent insight
“Sing out in jubilation and in praise.”
to the angels who terrified away the night.
Let not one string
of my forever-child’s heart and cunt fail to sing.
Open up this body half in the realm of life, half in death
and give breathe.
For to breathe is always to pray.
You language where language goes away
You were the terrorized child,
Mother,
Be no more.
Requiat in pacem.
Requiem.
For it was you I loved.
Delirium
181
ConceivingAda
Lynn Hersbmdn Leeson
Conceiving Ada is a film that invented the technology of virtual sets to
dramatize the converging lives of two young women widely separated in time:
Emmy, a driven young woman of the present day who is obsessed with her experiments programming
artificial life, and her 19th century counterpart, the brilliant
and daring Ada Byron King Lovelace, who foresaw the possibilities of artificial life
when she wrote what is now considered the first computer program in 1843.
As Emmy investigates Ada through a series of CD-ROM
biographies as well
as a DNA Memory Retrieval Program, she comes to identify with her subject to the
point that she experiences scenes from Ada’s life through Ada’s eyes. It is a life of
continual struggle for some measure of control: control over her own work. Ada’s
“Notes” were written to describe inventor Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, the
forerunner of the modern computer. She lost control over her own body, which was
ravaged by childbearing
and often-mysterious
ailments.
Even her own thought processes were forcibly directed onto a narrow
rationalistic course by her rigidly moralistic mother, Lady Byron, who counteracted
the “bad blood” of Ada’s’notorious
father, the poet Lord Byron. Nevertheless, Ada
proved herself to be Byron’s daughter in many ways. She led a double life as both
the respectable and accomplished Lady Lovelace, and the “scandalous” Ada Byron,
involved in drug use, high-stakes gambling, and torrid affairs with her tutors. Ada,
in fact, used her calculations to bet on horses, and lost the family fortune, sins she
confesses to her husband the night she died at age 36.
At first, Emmy’s “colonization”
of Ada’s identity seems to be a means of
exploring her own. Pregnant, yet compelled to continue her work and fulfill her
own addictive drives, Emmy is also monitored by controlling
forces of lover,
Nicholas.
The computer-driven
narrative of ConceivingAda
is structured to allow for
multiple interpretations.
It can be read as a projection of the terrors of giving birth
as represented in terms of the programming
of artificial life, or as a meditation on
pervasive erasure of privacy in modern life. But it is overridingly
a story of conflict
between “essential truth” and the representations which block our access to it. As
representations of reality become more and more technologically
complex, “truth’
seems to recede into an infinite proliferation
of screens.
The story ends six years after Emmy gives birth to Claire, and reminds us that
the grace of humanity allows each generation to reinvent itself.
Digital
Delirium
183
The following scenes take place as Ada is dying. Thejrst is between her mother and the
&al between her and Emmy, the contemporaty woman who uncovers her story
via the computer, and is then able to talk to her directly.
Lady Byron (hesitantly): Ada
told you about your father.
the truth about your father
became paralytic and were
Close up ofAdasface
- there is much I’ve never
Remember when you learned
and Aunt Augusta, you
in crutches for three years?
as she bears the story.
Lady Byron (cont’d): When I fought for custody of you
there was quite a scandal. Harriet Beecher was the only
one who tried to help, but it tainted her reputation as
well. (voice fading)
Ada: What are you trying to tell me Mother?
Lady Byron: It was his passions from which you were
conceived and his passions from which I hoped to
protect you. (beat) If I was harsh in your discipline, it
was to thwart his hereditary genes from transferring to
you.(beat) Is this upsetting you Bird?
Ada: No, Mother. In fact, it has made me realize even more
the fragility of time. All genetic linkage is a gamble, isn’t
it. This talk has not upset me. I knew from Aunt
Augusta the possibilities for recessive transfer. It has, in
fact, renewed my ambition.
(beat)
I must recalculate my life so as not to squander even a
second. Time seems to be the price of our genius.
Lady Byron: But Ada! That’s not at all what I meant. It’s
your soul that needs attention.
Ada rises. William
William:
is standing in the doorway and has overheard her last remark.
You’re far to weak -
Ada percefy): Weak? I have strengths you know nothing
William
Looks bewildered.
Ada (cont’d: Strength of conviction.
(she whispers as she walks past him to her desk)
We watch as Ada begins her calculations.
of!
184
Digital
Scene 79 -
Delirium
Emmy’s
Office
Emmy begins to pace agitatedly around the room. The image ofAda is projected on the
wall. Emmy bei@ to do rOga stretches on the floor, beneath the large image.
Close up ofA&
staring, saying nothing.
Emmy bends over, stretches, breathes deeply, walks to the camera attached to a computer,
turns it on and stanch in front of it. Emmy? image appears, scanned on the
computer. Emmy does a search for the Ada DNA microbe patterns. She turns the
camera on, aimed at herself A pattern emerges like a veil over A&s face.
Emmy (to herself and Godsdog): It was there all the time. It
was all in the overlap of the patterns.
The image flashes then opens. Emmyjgbost-Like
transparent.
image is coveringAa%
. It is subtle and
Emmy (looking at Godrdog): This is for Sims too.
Scene 80
Emmy (0.5.): Ada.
Ada jumps and looks aroundfea&lly.
Ada
(nervousI, tiying to laugh)
Have I truly gone mad at last!
Emmy: You’re not crazy Ada. That’s what they try to tell all
visionary women.
Ada (trembling slightly, still looking around): Mother always
told me I had an angel or a devil watching over me. But
which are you?
Emmy (0.~): Neither.
I’m a friend. I want to protect you.
Ada (now craning her neck to see ceiling corners): Where?
From where are you watching?
Emmy (o.s.) (hesitantly): I can see you be looking - through your eyes.. .
Numbly, A&puts
but I also seem to
her bana5 up to berface.
Scene 8 1
PO. V shot of the bands closing out the view of the room, as the sound of a heart beating
surges up and is mingled with the sound of a second heart pounding at a different
rhythm.
Digital
Delirium
185
Quick cut of Sims watching this same scene.
Emmy (o.s.): Oh my god, I didn’t think I would
pain. (distressed)
feel your
We see Emmy watching this scene in her room as a transparent image of her appears over
Adasprojection.
Ah turns her beadandstares out. She seems to be looking
directly at Emmy, who is facing her.
Ada: Can you save me?
The image warps, stutters, begins to rewind unsteadily, occasionally jerking
leaps in time. With a Fnal sbucider, the image begins to run forward
several scenes over: Ada is running tbrougb a brush
back great
again, we see
Ada: My name is Ada Byron King Countess of Lovelace
The image comes to a halt; then suddenly it rushes forward,
visible but a blur. Then it stops abruptly at:
Close up ofAda
so SWI& there is nothing
on her deathbed. She turns her bead.
Ada: We seem to return to this. No matter what path we
take, all roads lead here. Can you save me?
The image freezes.
Emmy (0.5.): I will try.
The image stutters, but begin again, i-epeating over and ouer:
Ada: Can you save me?
The imagepeezes. Emmy presses the save button.
Scene
82 -
Cut
to Emmy’s
Close Up ofEmmy?face.
office,
night.
H er eyes are ‘open wide as she gasps for air.
Emmy: Nicholas.
I was there! I was . . .inside!
We bear the sound of the door opening and Nicholas walks in.
Emmy (grabbing at the image of& on the monitor): I was
in there! She’s dying and I felt it! Let me show you.
Nicholas:
Emmy, you’re perspiring.
You look sick.
Emmy doubles over in pain. Nicholas is alarmed.
Emmy (IstruggLing to breathe calmly): Call the doctor. It’s
too early. Maybe a false alarm.. .
Nicholas:
Lie down. I’ll call her.
Digital
186
Delirium
Scene 83
Reluctantly Emmy moves into bed, but she refies to let Nicholas turn the computer ofi
Close up ofAd?
Emmy
in bed as a projection.
(o.J.) (in a whisper): I was in there.. .
Fade to Black
Scene 84 -
Interior
of Ada’s bedroom,
night.
PO. Vshotfiom A&j vantage. Dr. Locock stand5 over her. William
behind the doctor. Lady Byron is seated by the bed
stands in shadow
Dr. Locock: It seems that the uterus is destroyed. All that
math was just too much for your body. You brought it
on yourself. Now we can only ease your pain, Lady
Lovelace.
He bends forward
with a syringe. There is the sound of William
sobbing.
Ada: Opium?
Ah
gradually
I
relaxes under the influence of the drug.
Ada: What a blessing.. . opium. There is a lovely coolness.. .
Emmy
(v.o.): Why does it keep returning
Ada &int&
to this scene?
aloud,): Are you there, Angel/Devil?
Lady Byron (close beside Ada): Did you call me, Ada?
Emmy (20.): I’m here.
Ada: I’m glad.. . I’ve missed you. I realized I have missed
you all my life. I’ve always looked for someone who
would see me clearly and like me for who I am.. .
Dr. Locock (to Lady Byron): She’s hallucinating.
Ada (nrejGl@: They think so, do they? Well, I have been
accused of it often enough. This time it may be true.
The conversirtion and actions of Lad)! Byron, William,
sounds and movements.
and Dr. Locock recede to dim
Emmy (v.o.): Oh Ada, I’ve wanted to really know you for
so long - to see things from your point of view. But
now all I can feel is your pain.
Digital
Delirium
Ada: I’m so sorry. That’s always the way, isn’t it?
Emmy: It’s not your fault.
Ada: You know, I rather like
No, the worst part for me
am thinking. Now no one
words. And poor Babbage.
pain. It makes me feel alive.
is that I never wrote all that I
will ever know those stillborn
He has failed too.
Emmy (2.0.): You are both bound for greatness. I promise.
Ada (laughing weakIy): Greatness! One written work,
unsigned! Just the initials, “A.A.L.” My work will die as
surely as me and nearly as soon.
Emmy (11.0.): It’s not the quantity of writing you did, but
the profound nature of your insights. Nothing can take
away your accomplishments.
Ada: I never suspected the end of the equation would be
like this. To die in pain, with this wretched, bleeding. To
be humbled into servitude and dependence. To be
denied the grace of u nopiated relief. To be physically
degraded and depleted of spirit.
(beat)
Maybe Ishould write about this.
Emmy
(~0.): Your essence will survive, Ada.
Lady Byron (0.5.): Ada, do you know me?
Adz turns her bead to see her mother close by.
Ada: Yes, Mother.
Lady Byron: Ada, I was arranging your things and found
the letter you wrote to John Crosse.
Lady Byron (co&j:
I destroyed it. No one need know of
your eccentricities. Your flights of escapade.
Ada: But Mother, how could you. It contained
intimate thoughts.
my most
Lady Byron: Ada, I mean this only for your good. You
must protect your history. It is a blessing to have time to
ponder your sins.
187
188
Digital
Delirium
Child (no.): Oh, to have been carried off by a bolt of
lightning! A quick death would have been a mercy!
Lady Byron: You must confess your transgressions
husband.
Ada: Oh Mother,
to your
why?
Lady Byron: Ada! You must confess for your own sake! For
your soul!
Ada: Now I do not have to confess, You know everything
already. The real truth of my life has been destroyed
(beat)
to protect me.
Lady Byron (pleadingly):
so much relieved!
Ada: Opium
Confess to William.
You will feel
makes me feel more relieved.. .
Lady Byron (shocked at this blasphemy): Ada! I know that it
was your father’s blood that made you ill and irrational. I
accept that. I brought this on to you, I accept that as
well.
(beat)
Lady Byron (contti): I’ve attended to all your earthly
responsibilities, settled your gambling and horse racing
debts, arranged for the care of your children, redeemed
the Lovelace family jewels.
Ada couers her face as her mother lists these.
Lady Byron (cont’d): But you must find the strength to tell
William. . . for the sake of your soul.
Ada (writhing):
again -
Presuming
I still have one. Oh, the pain
Lady Byron: The doctor is outside the door. 1’11tell him to
give you another dose of opium - after you see
William.
Emmy
(v.o.): Why won’t she let up?
Lady Byron: William
must be told!
Digital
\
Ldy
Byron rises and leaves the bedtide
Emmy
Close up ofA&
Delirium
189
sufferingface.
(v.o.): Don’t listen to her! Don’t tell your husband!
We see Emmy push a key by mistake. Suddenly God&g appears in the scene and looks
around. Startled by her mistake, Emmy pushes the save button.
Cut to: Scene 85
The screen blinks and then fades and comes up.
Emmy (to Godsdog): I’ve got to get some air.
NicboIas walks in, walks around the room, settles down on the sofa and thumbs through
some magazines.
Godsdog:
Emmy’s a carrier.
Nicholas keeps reading, notpaying
Godsdog:
any attention.
Emmy’s an agent.
Nichokzs looks up.
Godsdog:
Emmy’s a carrier that could infect your son.
Nicholas:
Emmy, what is he saying?
The tekpbone rings. Emmy stirs ignores it as the answering machine picks up the call.
Nicholas:
What have you done, Emmy?
She looks away.
Nicholas:
The truth Emmy. What does he mean?
Emmy: Sims says it was safe. Besides, it’s only temporary.
Nicholas: What’s only temporary mean? What are you
doing Emmy. The truth. Do you know what the truth
is?
Emmy: I just immersed myself into her code patterns. It
was the only way to make direct contact. I needed to use
my DNA not only to make contact with Ada, but to
create an antibody that might save Sims. It was a matter
oflife and...
Nicholas: Emmy, it’s one thing to take chances with your
life, but our baby had no choice. He can be affected by
all of this. The transfer can affect him too! Sometimes
you’re so stupid, Emmy. You promised.
f
190
Digital
Delirium
Emmy:
I just wanted to see if it would
Nicholas:
said.
That’s what the inventors
work.
of the Atomic
bomb
He grabs Emmy and shakes her. Thq, begin toofight.
Emmy (weakly): The patterns have half life memories.
They evaporate; wear off very quickly.
Nicholas: How do you know there are no after effects. Like
Agent Orange, if no one has ever done this before.
Godsdog:
Nicholas
has done this before.
Both Emmy and Nicholas stare at Godrdog.
Emmy: What?
Godsdog:
Nicholas
revised the codes.
Emmy sinks into a chair.
Emmy: If you’ve been in here messing around, I have no
idea what has changed. I only knew what I was doing
was safe.
In f;ustration,
back.
Nicholas punches the computer, turning
it over a.she leaves. Go&dog reels
Nicholas: Emmy, they tell pregnant women to wear lead
aprons when they get x-rayed and here you are, flagrantly making cyber anti-bodies with our son’s life at
stake. What are we going to do?
Emmy:
Pray
Nicholas leaves.
Nicholas:
I’m going to ask Sims. Maybe he will know.
We hear Emmy sobbing under the next scenes.
Scene
86
The screen blinks a bit, then fades and come up.
Close up of the shadow of WI/I iam in profih, seated by the bed
Ada (piteously): Try to understand, William. You forgive
me, don’t you? Not because I deserve it, but because we
have to say good-bye.
Digital
Without answering, he takes her arm. The birthmark
sleeve. He kisses her band and sobs.
Ada (con@ (reaching out weakly): Wrlliam?
loved only you.
Delirium
191
shows through her transparent
You know I
He leaves, still sobbing.. .
Close up ofAd&
yes.
face as her headfalls
back against the pillow.
Tears trickle out of her
The Emmy alias is crying behind&.
Dr. Locock appears at the be&de
with a syringe, and administers the drug.
Child’s V.O.: In the end, it was William who proved to be
noble. His love was complete. He loved and protected
her despite the transgressions.
Dissolve
to: Scene 87
Close up ofAda
lying back weakly now.
Ada (dreamily): Yes, Mother..
repent of my sins.. .
. I renounce
the devil. I
Emmy (no.): Oh, Ada.. .
Ada &Saintly): Oh, are you still here? I thought I had
imagined you as a means of hedging my bets with death.
Dissolve
to: Scene 88
There is a droning sound I?O. K shot of ajgure which gradually becomes clearer: it is a
priest standing over A&s bedgiving her the last rites. Close up ofAda.
Priest: You are forgiven for the sins you have committed
through the sense of taste.
(draws crossesover her lips, then her ban&
You are forgiven for the sins you have committed
through the sense of touch.. .
Ada (softly)): The final irony! I’m forgiven
in the least sorry for.
for things I’m not
Emmy (desperately): Ada - you don’t have much time left,
I can feel your heart pounding as well as mine The heartbeats become deafening.
Ada: Are you there? Come to save me?
Emmy (0.~): Yes.
/
192
Digital
Delirium
Ada: How?
Emmy (0.~): I’m able to clone your memory patterns.
Everything you are thinking. Everything in your
memory.
Ada: Clone? What do you mean? I don’t know that word.
Is it French?
Emmy: Oh, it’s so difficult to make you understand what
we can do now. Believe me Ada, I can bring out your
memory patterns. Copy them exactly, They will exist in
a half life that will exist forever.
Ada: Hah? That’s a bad bargain.
half-life is better than none.
Emmy
I’m not at all certain a
(0.5.): It’s the only way.
Ada: How?
Emmy: Through
me.
Ada: And why should I be saved at your expense?
Emmy (0.5.): To take your rightful place, in history. So we
will all know the truth about your life. I promise that in
the year 2000 all the details that no one knows can be
made public. We will celebrate your accomplishments.
Ada: My rightful place? The year 2000? 166 years from
now?
(sighs, turning her bead away, then iuughs)
During my lifetime, I have lost all I ever called my own.
I have had to cede everything. My house, my work, my
body. Everything was taken over by others. I even
promised away my immortal soul in exchange for opium
and a little peace. But I still have something of myself
left.
(beat)
I can speak for myself, for my soul, or, as you put it, my
essence. I will not send it on to colonize you. Even for
history. You are my last friend and I will not taint you
with my diminished passions. The redeeming gift of
humanity is the ability of each generation to recreate
itself.
Digital
Emmy
(0.5.): Think
Delirium
of your heirs.
Ada (with a faint smile): They will have to take their
chances like I took mine. Life itself is a gamble.
(beat)
Besides, I would not want all my secrets known. Or to
be watched after my death.
Emmy: But Ada.. .
Ada: There is genius in our blood. We will calculate
another solution.
(beat)
Everything is perishable. Even time. Death makes the
fragility of life delicious. In general
I am not opposed to
>.
it.
She drapes her veil over the bird The image winks out.
Pull back to reveal Emmy sobbing.
Child’s V.O. (under sobs): Babbage was so distressed by this
premature death that he became isolated and bitter. It
was only after death that the validity of their ideas and of
their calculations were proven to have been true.
193
Extended-Body
An Interview with Stelarc
Puolo Atzori and Kirk Woolford
Stelarc is an Australian performance artist, born in Limasol, island of Cyprus.
Stelarc moved to Australia, where he studied Arts and Craft at TSTC, Art and
Technology at CAUTECH
and MBIT, M elb ourne University. He taught Art and
Sociology at Yokohama International
School and Sculpture and Drawing at Balurat
University College.
Stelarc has been extending his body through performances since the late
1960s. His performances include attaching a “Third Hand” to his body, extending
himself into virtual space with a “Virtual Arm,” and over 25 suspension events
where he hung his entire body from hooks piercing his skin. Stelarc’s artistic
strategy revolves around the idea of “enhancing the body” both in a physical and
technical manner. It originates as a polarity between the “primal desire” to defeat
the force of gravity with low-tech primitive rituals and the hi-tech performance
with the third hand and the related cybersystem. His intention in both cases is to
“express an idea with his direct experience.”
Through Stelarc’s work, we reach a second level of existence where the body
becomes the object for physical and technical experiments in order to discover its
limitations. When Stelarc speaks of the “obsolete body” he means that the body
must overcome centuries of prejudices and begin to be considered as an extendible
evolutionary
structure enhanced with the most disparate technologies, which are
more precise, accurate and powerful: “the body lacks of modular design;” “technology is what defines the meaning of being human, it’s part of being human.”
Especially living in the information
age, “the body is biologically inadequate.”
For Stelarc, “Electronic space becomes a medium of action rather than
information”.
Paolo AtzodKirk
Woolford: When did you first decide to hang yourself between two
different worlds - to place your body between two levels of existence?
Stekzrc: Well, you have to remember the suspension events weren’t the initial, sort of
primitive and physically difficult events and the technology ones the more recent,
more sophisticated ones. In fact, the third hand project began a year after the first
suspension event. These things were happening simultaneously.
On the one hand
you were discovering the psychological and physical limitations of the body. On the
other you were developing strategies for extending and enhancing it through
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technology. I’ve always used technology in my performances. The very first things I
made in art school were helmets and goggles that altered your binocular perception,
which stylistically have this connection with virtual reality head-mounted
displays;
and compartments
that were whole body pods that you sort of plugged your whole
body into, and then were assaulted by electronic sounds and lights.
AtzoriAVbolford:
‘When people see your suspension events, they immediately think
of Hindu, American Indian, or other rituals. Which of these practices did you come
into contact with first?
Stekzrc: It was the Hindu Indian ones that I knew about, but one has to put this
into the context that for five years I was doing suspension events with ropes and
harnesses, with a lot of technology. Laser eyes were first used when the body was
suspended, oh, 1970-71 that sort of time scale, but one of the sort of visual disadvantages of all this paraphernalia was that there was all this visual clutter: all the
ropes and harnesses were seen more to support the body than to suspend it, so
when I first came across the notion of piercing the skin, I thought, if you could
suspend the body using techniques like these, then you would have a minimum of
support, you’d have just the insertion and single cable. Mind you, I never hid, there
was no desire to make the suspension a kind of image of levitation. For me the
cables were lines of tension which were part of the visual design of the suspended
body, and the stretched skin was a kind of gravitational landscape. This is what it
took for a body to be suspended in a 1-G gravitational field. The other context is
the primal desire for floating and flying. A lot of primal rituals have to do with
suspending the body, but in the 20th century we have the reality of astronauts
floating in zero-G. So the suspension event is between those sort of primal
yearnings, and the contemporary
reality. Of course, suspension means between two
states, so I think there is an interesting linguistic meaning that fits in with the idea
of suspending the body, For me there was no religious context, no shamanistic
yearnings, no yogic conditioning
that had to do with these performances. In fact,
they occurred in the same kind of stream of consciousness. In mean, I don’t take
any anaesthetics, I don’t chant or get into altered states. I think metaphysically, in
the past, we’ve considered the skin as surface, as interface. The skin has been a
boundary for the soul, for the self, and simultaneously, a beginning to the world.
Once technology stretches and pierces the skin, the skin as a barrier is erased.
AtzoriA%olford:
performances?
Do you follow a very strict discipline
to train your body for your
Stekzrc: In fact, there’s never really been any discipline and when I start feeling the
performances have become, in a sense predictable, because the techniques assume
more importance than the creative impulses, then I stop doing them. I stopped
doing the suspension events four years ago because having done 27 of them in
various locations and different situations there seemed to be no more r&son d’etre to
continue doing them. The interest was really coupling the expression of an idea
with the direct experience of it. That applies to all of these performances whether
the suspension events, the stomach sculpture, the third hand performances, or the
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virtual arm event.
experience. So it’s
ideas of interface,
cyber-systems and
Atzori/l%olford
These are all situations where the body is plugged into for direct
not interesting for me to talk academically or theoretically about
the important thing for me is to plug in, extend the body with
see what it can actually do.
So you’ve always been interested
in enhancing
the body?
Stekzrc: Oh, absolutely. And the connection with VR systems is a very fundamental
one for me because, as I said, the very first things I made at art school were these
helmets which split your binocular vision and compartments which were sensory
environments,
multi-modal
structures for experience with the body. So that was a
primary concern, and really the suspensions are often taken out of context whereas
they are part of a series of sensory deprivation and physically difficult events which
include: making the three films of the inside of the body, where I had to film three
meters of internal space, for example. All these actions occurred simultaneously.
The agenda wasn’t a stylistic one with a particular technology, it was a general one.
A sort of probing and determining
the parameters of physical and psychological
interface.
AtwriAVoolford:
representation,
You always work with your body. Your body is your form of.
your medium. How do you feel being both an artist and an artwork?
Stekzrc: It’s interesting you’ve pointed that out, I’ve never felt that I am the artwork.
In fact the reason why my performances are focused on this particular body is that
it is difficult for me to convince other bodies to undergo rather awkward, difficult
and sometimes painful experiences. This body is just merely the convenient access
to a body for particular events and actions. So I’ve really never been obsessed by the
fact that somehow I am the artwork because I don’t critique it in that way.
For me the body is an impersonal, evolutionary, objective structure. Having
spent two thousand years prodding and poking the human psyche without any real
discernible changes in our historical and human outlook, we perhaps need to take a
more fundamental physiological and structural approach, and consider,the fact that
it’s only through radically redesigning the body that we will end up having significantly different thoughts and philosophies. I think our philosophies are hmdamentally bounded by our physiology; our peculiar kind of aesthetic orientation
in the
world: our peculiar five sensory modes of processing the world; and our particular
kinds of technology that enhance these perceptions. I think a truly alien intelligence
will occur from an alien body or from a machine structure. I don’t think human
beings will come up with fundamentally
new philosophies. An alien species may
not have the same notions about the universe at all. The desire for unity may well
be the result of our rather fragmentary sensory system where we observe the world
sensually in packets of discrete and different sensory modes. So our urge to merge,
our urge to unify, that religious, spiritual, coming together might very well be due
to an inadequacy or an incompleteness in our physiology.
Atwri/Woolford:
If such a philosophy is devised, it would not be a human
phy. How would it be applicable to the human race?
1
philoso-
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St&m: Well of course one shouldn’t consider the body or the human species as
possessing a kind of absolute nature. The desire to locate the self simply within a
particular biological body is no longer meaningful. What it means to be human is
being constantly redefined. For me, this is not a dilemma at all.
AtwriMoolford:
S o a human is not this entity sitting here with these two arms and
two legs, but something more beside?
St&m: Yes, of course, if you are sitting there with a heart pacemaker and an
artificial hip and something to augment your liver and kidney functions, would I
consider you less human? To be quite honest, most of your body might be made of
mechanical, silicon, or chip parts and if you behave in a socially acceptable way, you
respond to me in a human-like
fashion, to me that would make you a kind of
human subject.
Atzori/B%olford:
You keep speaking about redesigning
decides and how should it be redesigned?
the human
body. Who
Stekzrc: (Laughs) There is often misunderstanding
about these notions, partly
because they are critiqued with a kind of rear-vision mirror mentality of a fascist,
dictatorial, Orwellian-big-brother
scenario.
I don’t have a utopian perfect body I’m designing-a blueprint for; rather I’m
speculating on ways that individuals are not forced to, but may want to, redesign
their bodies - given that the body has become profoundly
obsolete in the intense
information
environment
it has created. It’s had this mad, Aristotelian urge’ to
accumulate more and more information.
An individual now cannot hope to absorb
and creatively process all this information,
Humans have created technologies and
machines ‘which are much more precise and powerful than the body.
How can the body function within this landscape of machines? Technology
has speeded up the body. The body now attains planetary-escape velocity, has to
function in zero-G and in greater time-space continuums. For me this demonstrates
the biological inadequacy of the body. Given that these things have occurred,
perhaps an ergonomic approach is no longer meaningful. In other words, we can’t
continue designing technology for the body because that technology begins to
usurp and outperform
the body. Perhaps it’s now time to design the body to match
it’s machines. We somehow have to turbo-drive the body-implant
and augment the
brain. We have to provide ways of connecting it to the cyber-network.
At the
moment this is not easily done, and it’s done indirectly via keyboards and other
devices. There’s no way of directly jacking in. Mind you, I’m not talking here in
terms of sci-Ii speculation. For me, these possibilities are already apparent. What do
we do when confronted with the situation where we discover the body is obsolete?
We have to start thinking of strategies for redesigning the body.
AtzoriA%olford
This recombinant body implies a widening of our sensibilities, of
our perception. But our senses are linked to our brains, everything “happens” in our
brain. So it’s not enough to have, for example, X-ray vision. We need to change our
synapses, the connections in our brains as well.
.
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Stehc: We shouldn’t start making distinctions between the brain and the body. This
particular biological entity with its proprioceptive
networks and spinal cord and
muscles, it’s the total kinesthetic orientation in the world, it’s the body’s mobility
which contributes towards curiosity. The desire to isolate the brain is the result of a
Cartesian dualism. It’s not really productive any more to think in that sense. We
have to think of the body plugged into a new technological terrain.
AtwrZ%olford:
We can see things that were previously invisible. We can go to the
very little through nano-technology,
see into infra-red and ultra violet spectrums,
but this is not a direct perception. We get this through artificial systems.. .
Stekzrc: Yes, and what will be interesting is when we can miniaturize these technologies and implant them into the body so that the body as total system becomes
subjectively aware again. New technologies tend to generate new perceptions and
paradigms of the world, and in turn, allow us to take further steps. If we consider
technologies as intermediaries
to the world, then, of course, we never have direct
experiences. At the moment, we operate within a very thin electro-magnetic
spectrum, and I would imagine that as.we increasingly operate in wider spheres of
reality, then yes, our perceptions and philosophies alter or adjust.
Technology has always been coupled with the evolutionary
development of
the body. Technology is what defines being human. It’s not an antagonistic alien
sort of object, it’s part of our human nature. It constructs our human nature. We
shouldn’t have a Frankensteinian
fear of incorporating
technology into the body,
and we shouldn’t consider our relationship to technology in a Faustian way - that
we’re somehow selling our soul because we’re using these forbidden energies. My
attitude is that technology is, and always has been, an appendage of the body.
AtwriAVZolford:
Stelarc, your latest work centers around a sculpture you built for
your stomach. What was the impetus for creating a sculpture to display inside your
body?
Stekm: I’ve moved beyond the skin as a barrier. Skin no longer signifies closure. I
wanted to rupture the surface of the body, penetrate the skin. With the stomach
sculpture, I position an artwork inside the body. The body becomes hollow with no
meaningful distinction between public, private and physiological spaces. The
hollow body becomes a host, not for a self or a soul, but simply for a sculpture.
Atwri7Wbolford:
tech equipment.
Funding any artwork is difficult, especially getting money for high
Did you have trouble finding funding for the sculpture?
Stekzrc: Actually no. One of the museums in Australia was preparing a show and
asking for sculptures which explored alternative display spaces. I told them I had an
alternative way and place to display a sculpture.
AtzoriAVholford:
Can you describe the stomach sculpture?
Stekzrc: It’s built of implant quality metals such as titanium, steel, silver; and gold. It
is constructed as a domed capsule shell about the size of a fist. The shell contains a
worm-screw and link mechanism and has a flexidrive cable connected to a servo
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motor controlled by a logic circuit. The capsule extends and retracts opening and
closing in three sections. An embedded instrument array, light and piezo buzzer
make the sculpture self-illuminating
and sound-emitting.
Atzori/Wolford:
How did you insert it?
Stehc: Very slowly. The stomach sculpture is actually the most dangerous performance I’ve done. We had to be within five minutes of a hospital in case we ruptured
any internal organs. To insert the sculpture, the stomach was first emptied by
withholding
food for about eight hours. Then the closed capsule, with beeping
sound and flashing light activated, was swallowed and guided down tethered to it’s
flexidrive cable, attached to the control box outside the body. Once inserted into
the stomach, we used an endoscope to inflate the stomach and suck out the excess
body fluids. The sculpture was then arrayed with switches on the control box. We
documented the whole performance using video endoscopy equipment. Even with a
stomach pump, we still had a problem with excess saliva. We had to hastily remove
all the probes on several occasions.
AtzoriYWbolford: Now you’ve penetrated the body. You’ve hollowed it out, extended
it, expanded it, hung it out a window, mapped out several miles of its interior.
What is the next step?
Stekzrc: It is time to recolonise the body with microminaturised
robots to augment
out bacterial population,
to assist our immunological
system, and to monitor the
capillary and internal tracts of the body. We need to build an internal surveillance
system for the body. We have to develop microbots whose behavior is not preprogrammed,
but activated by temperature, blood ,chemistry, the softness or
hardness of tissue and the presence of obstacles in tracts. These robots can then
work autonomously
on the body. The biocompatibility
of technology is not due to
its substance, but to its scale. Speck-sized robots are easily swallowed and may not
even be sensed. At a nanotech level, machines will navigate and inhabit cellular
spaces and manipulate molecular structures to extend the body from within.
Debauching the Digitalis
(this is me, speaking to you)
Part I: (this)
Avoidance as creation. First, the problem of zero, one {O,l; or even, 0 --> 1;
maybe also: beyond 0; finally, just the l}. Did you know that the square root of any
positive number after zero is eventually - I mean, after awhile (that is, at least to
nine digits, sometimes rounded up or down) - always and without fail equal to: 1.
Peculiar, though not fascinating, except to the very few. Indeed, probably only to
those with calculators and extra tirne on their hands, bored with some other
mathematical task (say, figuring out the law of averages). With the aid of light
avoidance techniques - boredom, self-abuse, whimsy, for example - surprising
things can be accomplished, even with the most simple of calculators! Like pressing
the magic 4 button enough times luntil a 1 emerges from any (positive) anonymous
chaos. Nerd sublimity.
Part II: (this is)
I would like to report right now, and without hesitation, that Bataille’s wry
sense of luxury, for whom the eating of one species by another is but a tasty, albeit
expensive, treat has fallen into the category of yesterday’s news. Witness the recent
television programme on “animal cannibalism.”
Photographed
in detailed slow
motion, I watched everything from amoebas to lions eating ‘their own kind’
seemingly without guilt, often in the trashy name of love, sex, power, scarcity of
resources or just good old-fashioned
street gang fiuore. Some kind of sectarianism
(left, right or centre)? No, that cannot be right: I’m confusing cannibalism with the
all too usual strains of political infanticide.
Part III: (this is me)
Four children’s questions: th.e practical one asks: how?; the evil one always
asks: why?; the wise one restates in question form the that; and the one who cannot
ask any questions doesn’t ask a thing. I have heard this somewhere before. Where?
Why? What does it matter that it matters? [O]? Could be charades; sounds like: the
passing (over) from exile to freedom. Maybe just democracy as a proposition
of
timing.
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Part IM (this is me speaking)
Peel back the surface of anything, let’s say, for convenience, the surface of a
conventional
table. Place the peeled surface over there, for a minute. Now, go paint
the new surface using only primary colours. Hold up a mirror to your new work of
art. What gave you the genius not to go outside the lines? Maybe it was just early
encouragement
with those lovely little baby colouring books when you were
awarded prizes for doing the job properly! Or, more probably, your neatness was the
result of a repetitive wound-trauma
from badly administered toilet training! You
have your doubts with either scenario? Your uncertainty might just be correct.
PartV: (thisis
me speaking
to)
Virtual beings created on the net. Is it only me, or have you noticed that the
only lack you multiple, seemingly radical imaginations lack has mainly to do with
the smelly juices of an (absent) orifice, especially genital. Come to think of it,
pluralised sexual orientations, genders, humours, laughters, forgettings, and etc.
seem to have gone also to that heavenly elsewhere located somewhere other in the
brave new (old) electronic sky. Applied technology gone horribly wrong or horribly
right? An endless supply of re-packaged deodorizers resurrected (sans the more
unpleasant virtues of excremental dirt). Can’t zero/one games do better than this?
Something is sorely lacking.
Part VI: (this is me speaking
to you)
Yea, but I am ashamed, disgraced, dishonoured, degraded, exploded: my
notorious crimes and villainies are come to light (deprendi miserum est
[it is a wretched thing to be caught]), my filthy lust, abominable
oppression and avarice lies open, my good name’s lost, my fortune’s
gone, I have been stigmatized, whipped at post, arraigned and condemned, I am a common obloquy, I have lost my ears, odious, execrable, abhorred of God and men. Be content, tis but a nine days’ wonder,
and as one sorrow drives out another, one passion another, one cloud
another, one rumour is expelled by another; every day almost come new
sun to your ears, as how the sun was eclipsed, meteors seen i’ th’ air,
monsters born, prodigies, how the Turks were overthrown
in Persia, an
earthquake in Helvetica, Calabria, Japan, or China, an inundation in
Holland,
a great plague in Constantinople,
a fire at Prague, a dearth in
Germany,
such a man I made a lord, a bishop, another hanged, deposed,
pursued
to death, for some murder,
treason,
rape, theft, oppression,
all
which we do hear at first with a kind of admiration,
detestation,
consternation,
but by and by they are buried in silence.. .
Comfort
thyself,
thou
art not the sole man.“’
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You do not understand what has been noted by one Mr. Robert Burton way
back in 162 I ! Answer then the following skill testing remark, tracking carefully, and
without mirth or indiscretion, the four points under discussion:
The machine went melancholic (then ballistic) when confronted with
the mutation of an affirmative negation. Discuss with relation to (a)
Auschwitz; (b) Hiroshima; (c) civil society: (d) fairy tales.
Make sure you double space all answers. THERE CAN BE NO EXTENSIONS, unless properly footnoted. Wine will be served at the end of the meal.
Good luck. All e-mailed responses accompanied with recent photo and telephone/
fax will receive immediate attention.
Ignore the man behind the curtain.
Notes
1. Robert Burton, The Anatomy ofMekzncholy, in three volumes, (1621), as reprinted (5th
edition, 1638, as reprinted 1932), New York/London: Everyman’s Library, 1932/1972),
2, pp. 199-200.
v.
Bring the Noise
Mega-TrancedFlesh
Interference-Patterns
[Poet as Strobe Starling]
John Nbto
I click on San Francisco’s premier college radio-station,
KUSF, and am met
with a growling sound difficult to distinguish from the static and roar of the
airwaves themselves - it is the raging, guttural voice of the DeathMetal band
Sepultura’s lead vocalist, pinning my ears back with the corruption
of human flesh
irrupting with the digested sound and fury of the world’s robotic simulcast mania.
I attend the screening of a recent Hong Kong film, Chun&ing &ress by
Wong Kar Wai, filled with stroboscopic bodies, faster-than-light
dialogue and
scenes in which the background whirls and zooms in ultra-fast-forward
mimicry of
Heart-On-Speedball-Mediagraphic-Overkill.
I open a slick contemporary
photography
magazine called BIG, and am
arrested by the “Diaries of Peter Beard,” a word-and-image
collage hybrid, densely,
intensely packed with the instant-memorabilia
and quick verbal sketches endemic
to the life in the fast lane we’ve all been forced to live under the Stars ‘n Hypes of
America’s advertising-as-lifestyle
hypnoinertia.
Beard pictures everything from the
plasticwomen of the “men’s” magazines to (sometimes juxtaposed with) childhood
memory Post-Its on the InfoSuperhighway
bulletin board, memory, that is, as
advertising copy.. .
I stumble upon an exhibition of “New Abstract” paintings by Oakland,
California’s brilliant Brad Johnson; paintings layered with sticky, dredged, raked,
gouged, trawled, streaked, mottled and smudged oils over delicate, atmospheric
green-gold and fire-red patinas - the look of an excavation site: muck & mire
ambiguously but poignantly gummed over the sheen of human spirit which yet
streams gorgeously through like angelic light onto the curtains of Hell.
All these and more I’ve seen in every medium, art-stories of the Age of Chaos
& Complexity, the Era of the False Crescendo - except one medium; what’s
holding poetry back?
Why do virtually all poems written today, whether “lyric” or “postmodern,”
treat the world as though the last 35 years of discovery in technology, philosophy
and the other arts never occurred or are barely worthy of notice? Why will poets not
tackle the Information
Age (as a present and inevitable influence, not as the
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“enemy”), the Loss of Privacy, The Phenomenon
of Global Breathlessness, the sheer
impenetrability
of contemporary
life to sensory-processing
(not as a bald-faced evil,
but as a reality to cope and wrestle with), and tackle these on their own terms in the
milieu of North America, l!XV’? Why is almost everyone writing poems as though
the world were a still and tranquil reflecting pool for quiet contemplation
as though
grandma were still in the kitchen making apricot preserves with FDR on the radio
reassuring us of the constancy of Western Civilization?
Does a continued loyalty to “elevated” subject matter still hold sway over
even self-professed “avant-garde” poets? Are many poets afraid to break the “pre;
cious and proper” mold? Yes, I think so. Have today’s poets forgotten the lesson of
the Beats, that there may be spiritual beauty in man-made ugliness, the lesson of the
Surrealists, that imagery’s power multiplies geometrically in juxtaposition?
Have
they ignored the developments in a dozen other art media (including,
right next
door, relevant advances in literary fiction!) over the last two+ decades? - Sure looks
that way!
Leafing through even some of the most reputedly “cutting-edge”
journals, I
am struck by the extent to which :none of this has registered, or to which it has been
shunted aside in favor of trendy, utterly indecipherable
work which, evidently, is the
stuff of high-powered
“careers” in academia.
In the last two years, though, I have seen breaks in the levee - the acceptance of Kerouac’s work by a sub-group of academics, the sudden interest in certain
contemporary
“NeoSurrealists”
(I: use the term loosely for want of a better one)
such as Will Alexandere and Ivan .Arguelles, whose work operates at the densitypotential threshold needed to begin describing the artifice-soup of signal-matrices,
jammed mental circuits and proprioceptive
arrest we’ve created and in which we’ve
immersed our flesh and souls, the emergence of a loosely-knit group of widely
scattered poets and essayists in their late 20s through 4Os, who are rocketing past
and away from stale poetic tradition and trend like Desolation Zealots high on
diffEQ and Laser Cryptography.
These poets understand that density, stress, overload and penetration are as
essential considerations as meter and deconstruction.
Their poetry weaves dense,
complex tapestries of sound-meanings
taken from broadcast Clan and brocaded with
brightly-hued,
cutting and dancing narrative, the human spirit on pins & needles
threading its way in primal nobility through the layers of overlay, layers so “noise-y”
as to appear aleatory at times - “irrelevant” detail ensnared in a web of probabilities, price quotes and yearnings, with a strong undercurrent
of “I-want-to-be-seenand-there-is-a-story-to-be-told-here-dammit”!!!
Theirs is no quiet, contemplative,
“broken” language surrounded by the
preciousness of pregnant negative space! AFter all, this is not Hellenic Athens, nor
17th century Japan, nor Browning’s England, nor is it even “Modernist”
America. It
is the late 1990s -The
Age of Writhing and Rapture Before the Anti-Sign of
MediaSpeak, a conglomerate of street-ese and “suit’‘-talk, the color-the-world-bynumbers we call home. These poets pervert it, play with it, mutate it and inflate it
to larger-than-life
proportions,
all with unabashed, strongheaded, but ever aware,
panache. The work is jarring, inci,sive, deadly!
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Their poems are mostly not about spruce trees, peaches and clotheslines
blowing in the wind, nor are they abstracted musings on the esoteric rituals of
linguistic analysis and endless self-reference. They mostly are about the human
voices howling through this tempestuous, ice-hot Night of a Million Channels.
Whether “lyric” or fragmentary or a combination,
the peaceful, proper poem of the
workshops and the “postmodern”
canon is about as relevant to living in 90s North
America as Elizabethan couplets or Alexandrine
prosody are to thelanguage
of the
City streets. The poets I speak of know this in their bones from the get go. That’s
why their poems are so damn sexy!
Tricked into time’s burning dress, you catch buildings in your beard of
flux.. .
. , .your flack, “spatial montages” in “zone[s] of hypermodernity.” Houses
of impulse, disposable
solace! Nomadness of nomads, dwelling as sojourn!
“No call-waiting for empyrean fire. ” Place, voracious hole, pivots with
tenses.. .
. . .Disemboweled planes, kiddie-straw struts, giddy smears of
color, aluminum sides: the self-hating home, technocracy’s deathproject!
It’s a managram, right? I mean, REM. Coof-ho~e?
. . .Delirious N. Y, delirious world (a global postman’s palace). Delirious,
I consume my backyard:
unslotted panes, ground cover and jonquils, wild violets.. .
from David Hoejri
“Rem Koohaas”
Their language is often breathless and abbreviated from its encounter with
the void deep inside “busy’‘-ness in,.America, the very Heart of Darkness in the
guise of the Virtues of Hard Work, Progress and Professionalism, the encounter
with the basest, subtlest animal augmented to techno-god and Chief Operating
Officer, Bill Gates as the new Satan at the core of us all, salivating as he brushes
Rembrandt and Mozart into the dustbin of history in favor of the rights to their
electronic $$ after-images.
The most admired person is the one who has himlherselfmolded
into
product, self-packaged and image-managed and on his/her way to your home on
CD-ROM.
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The blond elastic rain beneath the saw on the fuel-floor
A video-inoculated child immune from the fire-storm
Steers keyboard flames to a cornered matrix-man
How the fire-axe open his cartoon hands and heart
Each impuse-induced event on a binary switch
The blowing-away release a spasm of highlight
On a blackboard globe a child chalks countries in.. .
If this were a children’s book where clear picture-plates
Are laid over one another each with its layer of the picture
Whose question is what would it be had each never been
Whose question doubles each year like silver coins.. .
I was told to make it this waly by the voice of god.. .
The smooth screen renders dice and investment choice
The laser printer purr as the options expire.. .
It is said there are six worlds six veils six paper selves
When you see the dead hold their pasts in the tunnel-face
Bring a single voice bring rain some wheels of rain
You are one in an age of fissure-blades and teeth
A boat of broken sticks a boat of bronze a boat of flames
When you identity the dead you have passed the narrows
In the air in the falling cold you are in for a long dimb
from
Lina!cay
Hill?
“NcJenFerno”
There are times when nothing less than a phased, seeming-chaos of appropriated high-holy words and phrases will suffice to unscramble the sacrificial noise of
spirit embedded within force-fields emitting only interference-cardiography
from
nets swathed in tight-lipped
cash-transfer, distorting.. .
I recline in this noble hell
and pretend an appearance
allows bodies to writhe in warm metal air
filigree carbon
or geography is a world dreaming species through
Rumi ringdoves shivering mercury’s
stones to numb muscle sunflower,diode she in twin
chondria
fuels the microphage, equates cool ahtminum,
pelvis, thistle and yew
reactor’s gray theater, the spiral contracts and takes
root -
Digital
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207
, . , [ignition steel green moonflower
decides murder in a backseat,
handcuffed, dismembered
transplanted in half countenance
emerald
mandrake [(barter)]. . .
5. microwave assault foreshadows as an abstract of skull
generators whose coils devise rust, ideogram.. .
7. Castor is barren from eye facile bondage
until the extractor redeems with Quetzal-jade rain.. .
from
Jake Berryj
“Brambu
Drezi’:
. . .Like that.
Then, the suppressed rage gasses, sparks the torch-lit
lost knowledge of the Cloud Comanchee:
Part II
appendices
Apocalypse Now Reaches Critical Racheting
Sky Come Flaming Down
I mine steel-tank salvation
disclosure riddled with bulletholes, licking the flames;
cut-switch plies silence censored with rumbling
pipes, shredded documents, sysops, begging cups;
Know that rasp and tourniquet pressing blood
onto static-y plastiform rushes the ranks of the untouchables;
industrial filmic coding fingerpaints switchblade lungs
collapsed face-building onto a shear, the chest-knot
ice blocks mirror, claws: a boneless owl
stares back from muttered steam;
Ebola formats Disney lymphocyte debt-management,
“Should someone grunt, the scruff of the elbow groin
is forfeit” - running flush with dowel-in-anus,
wrangling the Dow,
like,
“Has anyone got a match?”
FLAMMABLE
GAS -
DO NOT LIGHT
UP
. . .BROOOM!!
j?om John
Tourniquet
N&o>
Owl”
“Perpetual
War: Wrist
Control
flaring with
208
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Yet, sometimes a poet must look through the sky’s dismissed ozone to fix the
star-snake’s gaze and chl on Circe and Athena to dispense with his/her agony and
dash it on the rocks in a burst of flash powder and blood metallurgy.
Imagine, so many sweet things in such thin air, but it is not so
. . .It is a flat, pear-shaped ga.rment with vertical openings
that reveal the vault of heaven, and that’s going to be
my excuse to waIIow in the mud, right?. . .
STILL, THE SPIRIT REFIJSES TO CONCEIVE
BODY.
WITHOUT
A
Perhaps because of all this, bloody bundles appear in desolate corners.
obietos de seducao.
That;
.
me displaying.
movable dream lab.
inside the lid: something long buried: subdued light, carpeted
floors, stairs, bird beak, a couch of some kind, forgotten
books, stones, dirt, water, beautiful illegible scribbles,
voices down the hall narrating as if a whole new continent I
have been listening to all my life passing under the roof of
my mouth, inwards.
from
firen
Kellty?
‘2 Description
of the World..
.”
sb passes the old poetics into oblivion (or at least history!). An entire world
and all its conceits, baubles and false promises reflex - swallowed by a new age
faster than a snapping mousetrap. Let the devil meet the deep blue sea and unravel
his inks in its fathoms - the flesh and the code are deposits of a god-like raiment,
the pulse and resistance of the MultiPlex Fray.
Poetry, then, has been playing catch up, riding gamy, old horses in a race
against turbo-charged
cheetahs. At the very least, we must begin to mount Arabian
stallions with night-vision
and enhanced traction-control!
Meet me at the stables.. .
Camcorder:DeluxeTitles
SuckOpticalCoitus
/oh Nbto
Zero-sum.
A man breaks down and is mechanized,
and 100,000 expendable Iraqis revive
as android processors on keyboards
invoke the spectre of a binary order
an Egyptian woman embroiders on a tabouret
the image of a couple embracing
through the flesh of their own children
warped out geometrically
across the globe
an attack of air-phones
lures an entire school to irs death
At the port of Israel
on a bus muMed voices with guns
force gas in the mouths of significant others
through the lost playgrounds
I was crushed and tagged
by a vicious number:
the next rise in expectations
Slips soothing replicant memories inside
the global mudslide cartoon
swallows the post-nuclear family
beached on a shelf
celluloid
through the voices of wave-people
the lion-faced serpent
Who will announce the names
I’ve shaved
to protect the innocent
they kept under cold surveillance?
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A woman in a black garter belt
presses distended nipples ag,ainst a stiff,
cocks, pivots and vanishes
beneath the rim of the Indian subcontinent
Sumatra glows exotic
pebbles in the dash of the Seychelles
spill down dark reflector tape
moonwash
unzipping the world
Through a rift
in the birth of velcro
a Caesarean scar lingers
on my hidden wing-camera
the moon waxed
as a snow-blind leopard might smoke in her eyes
an endless cycle of frenzy and slow-scan
Over Antarctic cliffs
the convenience store of a billion tears
caressesthe right urge
to build a consensus alarm
into heat;seeking loins
instantly and with unmediated ruthlessness
Shocked on the groin
out in the killing fields
meat-clamps
my test scores cancel
extending prosthetic incisors
accessthe G-spot in North Korea
and rip out its tonsils
Along my inner thighs
the force behind acute multi-level marketing
schemes the transport of hel.ium bells
dripping from sleeves of Nepalese spirit armies
under the shuddering stars
a sabertooth llama
breaks the silence
riding the world-gasm like a tube
aboard breaking trends
DigitaJ Delirium
In wetware
thong-back
Euro-trash shunts down a maI
golden
under the sky-machine
a unicorn bridled
before dawn
systemic assimilations to the screamscape
load both barrels
and the queen of ravished gypsies
lies with slaves
Labor-intensive
menacing hands
sail the ship of state through horse latitudes
anywhere in the minus column
the unknown and unwanted
count as seams in the hull of the world
and hooves tighten
trance-like
over the gallop of commerce
the most innocent confession forced
A skin-sensitive switch jammed in the off-position
halts seven continents
grimacing
contestants behave homogeneously
consuming the pattern of oats
and unquenchable thirst
strapped on your native dressage a livid cat
wrestling for the feedbag
Within the whining
RAGE
suck my eyes from the face of the lens.
211
Augustineof Epcot
Confessions of a Hyper-Miraculous Age
from Chronicles of Life in the Electronic
Middle Ages; or, The City of Disney
Lhniel R. White
DifBcile est saturam non scribere (“It’s dificult
not to write satire”)
/uvenal
Preface
during
News stories like the following emanated
December of 1996:
-
CLEARWATER - A finance company on
busy U.S. 19 became the site of a mass pilgrimage Tuesday when a stain on the building’s side assumed the visage of the Virgin
Mary for the faithful.’
CLEARWATER - The trickle of pilgrims
coming to an offtce building to see a two-story
image resembling the Virgin Mary turned into
a traffc-clogging throng on Wednesday.
Thousands went to Seminole Finance Corp.
near Drew Street and US. 19 to see the sight
and, in some cases, look for a miracle.*
CLEARWATER - When a city has a highprofile apparition of the Virgin Mary on its
hands, it calls for serious action. That’s why
Cleatwater officials on Thursday established
the Miracle Management Task Force.:’
TOKYO, 1997 JAN 13 (NB) - This is a
roundup of new and updated resources and
services on the global Internet, including: in
the news -Virgin
Mary in Florida.4
CLEARWATER - Covering nine panels of
bronze-tinted class, the imaee evokes an im-
from the Tampa Bay area in Florida
pressionist stained glass portrait of Mary, her
downward gaze cloaked in a mantle of swirling hues. Although glass experts have attributed the multicolored pattern to the effects
of weather and sun, belief overrides science
for most visiting the makeshift shrine.5
CLEARWATER
- Throughout
the large
parking lot Monday, people bowed their
heads, knelt on the pavement and openly wept
before the sight. Many of them added to what
has become a shrine of several hundred prayer
candles, potted poinsettias, photographs of
loved ones and hand-scrawled pleas for helpe6
CLEARWATER - Some 800 pilgrims stand
at noon in the south parking lot of Seminole
Finance Company, near Drew Street on U.S.
19: construction workers, business people in
suits, mothers with babies, teenagers, the elderly, the disabled. Tears stream down the faces
of new arrivals, Strangers converse and share
their wonder. Around the periphery, six television satellite trucks stretch microwave towers heavenward. Revorters work the crowd.’
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213
I found myself, on December 3Ist, amidst this crowd of the curious, fascinated and desperate. I just happened to be in Clearwater for the afternoon. I hadn’t
planned to attend the miracle, but, as traffic swept me into its vortex, I became a
participant-observer.
I have recorded my impressions below through the eyes of a
fictive persona, Augustine of Epcot. I offer this event-scene as an experiment in
altered subjectivity and critical historicity: the first of Augustine’s confessions and
chronicles of our times.
Book
,
I: Event-Scene:
Miracle
on US 19
“The appearance of the an image in glass, on a finance company building in
Clearwater, Florida, has drawn pilgrims by the thousands, a multitude of the
faithful come to view the miraculous vision of the Virgin in Glass.” So the author’s
consciousness of the late twentieth century, only three years from the millennium,
might construe the events of this day of our Lord, 3 1 December 1996. As I must
speak in that Authorial mode, I do so now, understanding
the Limits of Insight that
this entails, but such are the conditions of our current Fall into the realm of
Subjectivity, a kind of Captivity in the Babylon of Consumerism, whose Intellect is
condemned to Produce Commodities
in the Alienated Person of Authority. But, if I
may confess, I view things somewhat differently, amidst my ceaseless wanderings
under the bridges, across the parks, through the Stadiums of - in the words of a
recent friendly Saint suited in gold like (but not actually of the same substance as
the original) Elvis - the hyperreal kingdom, “America”: self-proclaimed
star of two
continents, supervening locally like the haggard pixellated ghost of divinity
absconditus upon the landscape of my home peninsula. I was born here in midcentury, 1950, in a little house on 23rd Avenue North, whose number signifies that
Psalm which makes of all faithful Sheep, in St. Petersburg, home of the retired, the
dead and the dying, home too of the Segregated Drinking Fountain and the wars of
race and class flowing from it, a city named after another old Saint friend of Mine
and, soon, no doubt, ofYours if I may be permitted a moment of memento mori.
Though I didn’t k now it at the time, I was born, this time once again (yes, I confess,
this is a heterodox idea, reincarnation,
popular not only in the Old Empire but also,
more recently, in upper-caste California) as a neighbor to the coming Event. That
Occurrence, the celestial visit in Clearwater, is perhaps the organizing eschaton of
Florida history, and perhaps even of our collective history to date, if we take into
account the great European invasion of Florida by Ponce de Leon, itself the tip of a
great migratory toe stepping onto North America, in search of youth and gold and
hope and, of course, Real Estate. Could it All have led here, to the Corner of US 19
and Drew Street in Clearwater? To visit this site, You might think so.
So, this is how it begins, and this is how it will end, perhaps, the story of our
times in this terribly stricken land of Florida, once the domain of Flowers, lately
visited by the ghostly image of our Lady. The appearance of the Virgin in glass is
the miracle the great stream of travelers has been seeking all along, I believe, in their
ceaseless wandering up and down the asphalt river between the shrines of consumerism, the great Malls gracing our landscape like Tombs, their designer iconography
illuminated
by hot lights under plate glass, plastic visages frozen in smiles of
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concerted amity, Directed toward the Final sale and the transubstantiation
of the
very lives of the seekers miraculously into Commodities:
those mailing sheep in the
flock of the devoted, all in quest of their dreams. Our dreams. I have looked in awe
at them, and at myself reflected, like our Lady, in glass, my image a patina of light
laid delicately over the more stately images of the mannequins behind shop glass,
wondering how I myself might become transformed into an idol of the market, and
I have reflected too on my own image, pale and imperfect as it must needs be, in
the presence of that Radiance 1,witnessed today on Highway 19. But less of myself,
for now, and more of the Virgin and Her other admirers, many of whom have come
so far to witness a miracle.
There is an eeriness, a strange panic and hushed desperation, evident on the
faces of the devoted before our Lady of the Glass, so many attempting, futilely I
imagine, to capture Her miracle in the boxes of their cameras, some of which are of
the Kodak disposable variety, to take home to enthrall their friends and neighbors.
They might well Hope to Package some of Her, perhaps, standing before the (I
might admit I hope without disrespect) rather oily image of the celestial Lady,
emerging with such glory on the Finance facade, just below a Sign, a billboard for
medical services, itself rising above the litany of the tralfic, reading “Have your
tattoos removed.” Indeed, the box - camera, “vault,” kamera, “chamber,” as our
Latin and Greek Fathers would say - is in some sense a key to the mystery of the
Virgin, or at least to Her effect here in Clearwater, itself a kind of camera lucida
projecting the celestial image, as if through a spiritual microscope, upon the Plate of
Commerce. For she is not only gracing that Industry offering promises of happiness
and protection from calamity, as our Lady herself is wont to do, but She is surrounded by - seemingly encased in - the great icons of power which are interspersed on the landscape between the Malls, so many beacons on the road to
Orlando, signs of our Progress toward our End. Our lady appears, to the cinematically conditioned
consciousness, as a muted curvaceous rainbow, rather like those
Madonnas one used to see in Byzantium, and now sees on the Arts and Entertainment Network (Angels & Evangel:;, I would have thought), mosaic images of our
holy Mother emanating from tesserae of blue, amber and gold, on the walls of
Churches in the Old Empire and on the Monitors of Cable Christendom
in the
New. She arises from the tesserae of mineral deposits on glass, stricken and transformed by Light, and hangs there amidst, as I was saying, the Signs.
“Amoco,” reads one on the corner just below our Lady’s visage, itself a logo in
red and.blue, offering the blessing of transport to the pilgrims; from mall to mall,
and a kind of industrial oasis for their wheeled-internal-combustion
boxes of steel,
plastic and glass, which bear them into the presence of the Lady, and’require
considerable attention from local Authorities in charge of traffic, and litany, control.
Of these Authorities
and their orchestration of devotees, I shall speak Again.
“Pelican Car Wash” is emblazoned on yet another sign, though this one seems less
universal than Amoco, notwithstanding
its promise of.“oil change while you wait,”
conveniently, I surmise, allowing the devoted further to rejuvenate and even
illuminate their automotive cubicles with polish, while attending the miracle.
“Kane’s Furniture”
offers its self-evident, if again less than universal, appeal from
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215
across the eight lanes of concrete whose Signs say US 19, a way reminiscent of those
viae constructed in the Old Empire, Via Appia etc., this being no doubt the Via
Commercii, whose ancient forebears lead to great Imperial monuments we once
admired and then shunned in favor of the Savior and, of course, his Mother, whom
we in turn shunned in favor Images, and Madonnas too, more worldly and, some
would say, profane. Curiously, though, no one has yet seen fit to purchase any
chairs or tables or other paraphernalia of Comfort from Kane’s, to enhance his or
her stay in the Presence of our Lady. The Authorities, themselves present in considerable number, would no doubt disapprove of that. There is a woman selling cotton
vestments, “T-Shirts” her Sign reads, bearing the title, “Miraculous
Mary,” which
some younger Seekers seem to think may be the name of a “band” of “punk”
minstrels rather than of our Lady, but on this subject I am not qualified to speak. In
any case, the devotees stand, and mill, and stare in the presence of the “awesome.”
“No Parking” is also evident, highlighted
by a forest of orange cones pointing, like
so many Fingers of Remonstration
by the Authorities,
toward Heaven, and this at
least has the aura of universality again, being a sign (No Parking) which God no
doubt would have given to Paul in his Fortunate fall from his legged vehicle on the
road to Damascus, with a vision of the Son shining in his eyes, if it were not for His
infinite mercy in allowing saints to exvehiculate during visions (a policy I have
recommended
in several editorials to the Clearwater Sun, none of which has
appeared as yet in print, possibly due to the paper’s fear of angering the Authorities).
I have, by the way, watched this Virgin miracle on Tele-Vision, as They call it,
and it is not the same as being there, though of Tele-i’isual miracles I shall also
speak Again. Our lady appears, curiously, in multiple apparitions on various panes
of the Finance Company, leading one to believe that her appearance-is meant to
have less than a unique appeal, perhaps indicating the complexity of projecting
divinity in what Saint Baudrillard called the realm of Simulacra, a Zone in Saint
Pynchon’s sense more suited, perhaps, to the apprentices of the Sorcerer than to the
passionate admirers of our Lady, but, again, this could be, in spite of my preference
for “being there,” a domain where the actual event and the Tele-Visual have,
miraculously
in a strange new sense, been transubstantiated.
One has only to reenvision her mineral tesserae as digital bits of primary color, to Imagine one is
squinting at a Modern painting by Seurat or at the site of the Louvre on the
Internet. But I precede myself again, and promise to speak of media miracles in a
later chapter. You Authorities reading these words may ignore my comments on
Tele-Vision and on Yourselves, as I have already spoken of these mysteries on the
Tele-Phone, to which you are already Secretly privileged to listen.
I am amazed at the masses of the devoted themselves, of their plights, and of
the Hope that seems to draw them into the Presence so strangely ambient amidst
the Signs and Authorities and Malls of late Modernity. So let me share with you
what I witnessed today, this last dies of our Lord’s annum, in the Reign of Clinton,
1996. One wonders if the Sign, US 19, is not an intimation
of the End of that
grievously destructive era leading up to the Appearance of Notre Dame, Parthenos
Kathara, here in “Clearwater,”
whose name itself may be a neon intimation
of the
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luminescent Baptism - purifying virginity of the Unsignified, our Lady of Contracts (including
Finance and Insurance Policies) Unsigned - offered by the
present Vision. “All things are signs and of signs they are made,” if I may conflate
two Saints from very different yet perhaps, in the hyperreal Imaginary of our
collapsing millennium,
convergent schools, the one the Author of the
Dhammapada, the other of Of Grammatology, both of whom are virtually absent like
Yours truly. In any case, we are all,, entrapped here in this text, and despite our
denials of metaphysics, Devotees of the industrial Dump, more or less like Vladimir
and Estragon, so let us attend to our fellows and their Hope renewed by the
miracle.
Onward march the banners of the Kingdom of Death, Lord; I see the Signs
marking its seductive and universal machineries, as I stand below the bright arcs of
metallic birds piercing Your heavens, and wade through the colored legions of steel
thundering
down the lanes of fused stone, transporting souls in endless rings
around Your Spouse and Your Son, emblazoned here in stained glass. In Awe I view
the Letters of Hope written to Her in the Spirit of the Love She emanates. But, Oh,
give me the power of Your mysterious Word that I may express the Anguish that I
see written here!
Now I gaze at formations of Candles, standing together like so many soldiers
before a great battle, massed before Mary’s image as if to protect Her from some
approaching
Peril. Or are they huddled around Our Lady to receive Her Protection
from the Gargantuan Thing, ResMundi, whose name echoes from their ranks in
one collective voice crying, not in the wilderness, Lord, for that has already been
Consumed, but rather from the phantasmagoria
of concrete and plastic that
surrounds them, and their Protectress, on this bright Winter day in the land of
Flowers? Yet, what I see in the hands of these glass soldiers, these little vestibules of
light before the Miracle and, yes, partaking of it, indeed, too, constituting part of its
glory, what I see are Letters, Lord, written by so many hands in so many languages
that even with the learning of Rome I cannot read them all. Yet I shall share with
You what I have seen, as it resonates in my soul, that You may hear through me
what You already know, yet patiently attend to as the sad melodies of Time, “the
ebb and flow of human misery.” Some of their missives I do not recall literally, so
let me paraphrase: “Mary please bring back our daughter, Sarah, to her family, We
miss her and need her home,” cries one broken soul. And another’s voice pleads,
“My grandmother
has a tumor on her neck. Mary, please help her with the pain.”
And yet another, “Please help us get our 16-year-old son out of jail.” “Beloved
Mary, I am alone. Please bring me love,” appears in a shaken hand on paper limp
with last night’s damp. “Mary, please bless my husband so that he can stop drinking,” cries another from mute paper. Yet another reads in bleary script, “I have no
job. Please Mary, help-me find work.” Others, I managed to write down on the
sleeve of my gown, so I have a literal record (though I have abbreviated names to
protect the Innocent):
’
Digital
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217
“Everyone please take time to read - I believe that this has been ,sent from
heaven that the Vergin Mary is holdin Jesus’ hand and when she lets go - &rats it
- cause her hands getting heavy - so if your not saved please get saved. Anne G. I
love you Jesus & Mary”
“Mary Mother of God, Please, we pray for an arrest soon. You know the
feeling of losing a son.. . Lynn E. and George A. are withholding
information
from
the police - but not from you!”
“Help heal my eyes.”
“Pray for Shawn to find happiness.”
I wonder if the Authorities consult the Virgin regarding Information
otherwise unobtainable?
Yet Behold: Amidst all these missives of despair, Lord, stands a
color image on paper, jutting from beneath a glass candle holder, and on it one of
the most peculiar compound messages I have ever encountered in my spiritual
quest. There is the picture of a small, fluffy-white dog, mouth agape as if in a smile,
and beneath it a note reading: “Please bless Chris, our beloved poodle, blessed
Virgin Mary”! I am so stricken by this message of spiritual Need, and in the
kindness shown even to household pets, here in the presence of our Lady of US 19,
that I turn my face heavenward, past the prism of light of the miracle in glass, and
- forgive me Lord for I must confess - laugh. As I look down again among the
legions of the Desperate, my Fount of Light , I find another note, probably written
by a philosopher
of the street, which generalizes the sentiment I find inscribed
everywhere here, for it says, presumably to Mary though there is no salutation:
“Bless those less fortunit.”
The writing of Arabian souls is emblazoned here, too, Lord, for they are no
doubt just as miserable as the rest of us, and that ofYour Latin Church in the
Americas, and even that strange composite script of the New flocks who come from
across the Pacific, under the Sign of Toyota, to visit my home and Xrnerica’s” great
City on the Swamp, Epcot, domain of that Second Son, Walt, whose miracles have
so enlivened souls with the Phantasies of Light on Tele-Vision. Yet whatever their
script, there rises from the thousand sheets of vellum here, not only despair but
also, above all, Hope.
I have been told by another Pilgrim that a strange little man appeared at the
Site in the first week of the new year. He was dressed in black vestments with a
black mitre, which rose like a tombstone above his long white hair and sundarkened face splashed with a white moustache. From around his neck hung a gold
medallion, which glinted in the candle light and seemed to hypnotize the Admirers
who circled ‘round him with specula - a glimmer of hope. “Perhaps he is a Greek,
or a Bishop of some post-Christian
sect,” I commented, though I can not report his
appearance with confidence, since I only heard of it from another.
I have thought long on that Hope, as the Despair seems plain enough in the
Desert of Signs that stretches between the Malls, for I see a yearning that is unfulfilled in the Desires prompted by the consuming machineries of night, amidst the
starry glare of thousands of lamps lighting the way of the earthly “cars” on US 19,
and the planetary neon Signs that glow in Primary Colors along the vast concrete
plain I travel, just past evening. I cannot see Your stars, Lord, though I strain
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upward toward the Empyrean, anld the Image of Our Lady is gone, too, taken by
the miraculous descent of the Sun beneath our little sphere at the center and lowest
point of the Cosmos You have fashioned, yet also at the pinnacle of spiritual
possibility. Now I too Hope, and wonder, at the miracle of this inspiration that You
have planted in us, that we could be entombed in a dying world, a mortal shell,
encased, if you will, Lord, in a Dumpster outside Paradise, yet still we can aspire out
of the Tomb toward the Light.
Notes
AII citations from The Tampa Tribune are from the paper’s World Wide Web page dedicated
to the apparition. The Internet address is: <hnp://www.tampatrib.com/news/
maryindx.htm>.
1. CoryelI, George and Janet Leiser. “.Faitbful Flock to Clearwater Building, Say Image of
Virgin.” Empa Tribune. 18 December 1996. Internet. 8 January 1997.
2. Norton, Wilma and Curtis Kreuger. “Come All Ye Faithful.” St. Peters&urg,Times.
Thursday, 19 December 1996, Pinellas Edition: 1 A.
3. Collins, Lesley. “Popular Image Spurs City Task Force.” Tampa Tribune. 27 December.
Internet. 8 January 1997.
4. Williams, Marryn. Internet Update. NewsbytesNezur Network.
13 January 1997.
5. Coryell, George. “Thousands Find Peace with Image.” Tampa Tribune. 2.5 December
1996. Internet. 13 January 1997.
6. Spitz, Jill Jorden. “Seeing is Believing - Devout Visit Mary’s Image.” Orlando Sentinel. 24
December 1996.
7. Barry, Rick. “Christmas Miracle on U.S. 19”? Tampa Tribune. 19 December 1996.
Internet. 8 January 1997.
Where Do Angels Hang in
the Cybernet Nineties?
Meditations on Theological Politics
[to Shannon]
Since I have lacked the comfort of that light,
The which was wont to lead my thoughts astray,
I wander as in darkness of the night,
Afraid of every danger’s least dismay.’
I have never seen or felt angels or even know if they really exist. We haven’t
met, the angels and I. They have not been part of my life. They seem to belong to
things that do not really concern me, such as major religious enterprises and
patriarchal angst about other-worlds.
But I am certainly not opposed to the idea of
angels. They have an appealing ecumenical pull. Even my heroes k.d. lang and Jane
Siberry soar and swing to the heavens every so often, singing “Calling all angels.”
Angels have just never seemed immediately present. In fact, they seem far away
from a world of slaughter and suffering, which is probably a good thing for them.
Yet some traces in our culture do hint that they hang close at times when official
sanction thrusts individuals up against a cold wall of pain and suffering,
From the twelfth century onwards Christ is clothed only in a loin-cloth
and stands facing the observer, either behind or in front of the column,
as in certain images on painted crosses... In the Flagellation on the
earliest surviving painted cross in Sarzana two angels kneel on two roofs
which descend steeply toward the column of Christ’s martyrdom; they
illustrate Christ’s divinity in his hour of humiliation. They appear again
on the side panels of the arms of a painted processional cross in the style
of Cimabue.. .*
This image of Christ does contain a more than subtle erotic “0 come ye forth
earnest Catholic youth.” The scene blends several seemingly disparate elements:
sensuality, violence and spirituality. Beneath a veneer of offtcial Catholicism lies an
association between “managed pain” administered by temporal masters and the
transcendent spirituality achieved by the slave. The fountainheads
of Western
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sadomasochism, whose contemporary
adepts strive to arouse previously untapped
passions, could hardly be clearer. The presence of angels at the flagellation underlines their role in contexts that draw together corporeal pain, physical passion and
spiritual values.
The thing really is that I haven’t called on these far-away angels nor have they
seen fit to call on me. They are distant from my daily life, although I like the fact
that they helped out East German political refugees in Wim Wender’s F.%gs of
Desire during the eighties. The image gave them a twentieth-century
“feel” and
placed them in the context of the spiritual issues of our own time period. But angels
are a rarely considered element in the world order. They are relegated to our
subconscious as we obsess over debt-reduction,
the hunt for welfare fraud and
efforts to generally make government more “effective.” Due to its close links with
light, significant theological questions can be raised about the information
industry.
Angels are made of light and presumably omnipresent, but part of a love about
which the cybernet nineties are so inarticulate. The light of angels, their curly hair
and rosy cheeks are just too incongruous on legal data-bases, corporate spread
sheets, electronic bulletin boards or the StatsCan on-line info service.3 As the
portraits of Christ’s passion indicate, however, angels embody serious spiritual
transcendence, not the saccharine love of Hallmark greeting cards. The seriousness
of their role was openly acknowledged in pre-modern thought. Socrates, for
example, referred to supernatural creatures to meet the charge of atheism,
. . .if I believe in supernatural beings, as you assert, if these supernatural
beings are gods in any sense, we shall reach the conclusion which I
mentioned just now when I said that you were testing my intelligence
for your own amusement, by stating first that I do not believe in gods,
and then again that I do, since I believe in supernatural beings. If on the
other hand these supernatural beings are bastard children of the gods by
nymphs or other mothers, :asthey are reputed to be, who in the world
would believe in the children of gods and not in the gods themselves?4
After antiquity, angels became less intimate and more Augustinian.
St.
Augustine makes angels his business (as he incidentally
dollops simplicity and order
onto Plato’s un-Christian
universe:) and is more categoric about their role and
presence,
when God said, “Let there be light,” and light was created, then, if we
are right in interpreting this as in&ding the creation of the angels, they
immediately become partakers of the eternal light, which is the
unchanging Wisdom of God, the agent of God’s whole creation.. .the
angels, illuminated by that light by which they were created, themselves
became light, and are caIIed “day,” by participation in the changeless
light and day. 5
Although this account is rather more Catholic than I could ever wish to
sustain, it shows how angels are part of both Plato and Augustine’s world (although
the shift from Platonic supernatural beings to eternal light must have been rude),
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giving them an impressive genealogy. In the I!?%, the Augustinian
after-life (along
with many other things) has become distinctly temporal. We cut money to the
poor, wave fingers at welfare mothers, castrate paedophiles and watch the slaughter
of innocents over steaming TV dinners each evening, all the while making scant
reference to angels and light. The prevailing social sadism of our time does not even
aim at a better (Augustinian)
after-life, but merely hopes to maintain structures that
are as yet undefined; but certainly something less than that to which we have
become accustomed.
The chain of events that leads me to angels goes something like this:
It’s Gay Pride week in Toronto and I’m staying at Shannon’s. I arrive early,
two days before she returns from a ten-day holiday in Greece. She bursts out of the
arrivals lounge flush with the idea of learning to drive a standard transmission
automobile, full of projects for becoming her own “master.” On Monday, Shannon
phones a driving school, enrolls in horseback riding classes and then turns to
renting a standard Jeep. The road to self-mastery arches off to the horizon even
though she has to settle for a Jeep with an automatic transmission. We rush off to
the Chrysler dealer at noon and spot several Jeeps for sale in the parking lot. All
have standard transmissions. In a fit of mastery, Shannon spontaneously decides to
buy her own standard Jeep. Negotiations drag on, but we emerge with a complimentary red automatic-transmission
Jeep until she takes possession of her own.
“Let’s take the top down,” Shannon says. We throw ourselves on the Jeep with
Amazon frenzy. Zippers. Velcro. Vinyl. More zippers. More vinyl. More velcro. The
scene has the feel of an SM porn shot as we sweat, puff and heave with zippers and
velcro, unzipping and un-velcro-ing
until we reach an impasse, not quite either
master or slave to circumstances. A decidedly non-erotic sweat breaks out as we
struggle with mind’s barriers to body’s pleasures. The roof is not off the vehicle, but
merely de-constructed.
A nice young man from the dealership then appears and
calmly removes the top. No need to un-zip or un-velcro.. . just un-hook handles
above the windshield and pull back. Mastery, it appears, requires deliberation. As
we pull away, Shannon says, “I have to get the tiny perfect Buddha that Gad gave
me soldered onto my earring. I want to go to Urban Primitives.” She steps on the
gas, veers abruptly into the right lane and we’re off on a new mission. It is just after
4 pm. Urban Primitives is a tattooing and piercing salon in a second-floor office on
Church Street one-and-one-half
blocks south of Wellesley, a site for inversion of the
hegemonic mind-body
rapport.
Piercing. Infibulate. The term is often used to refer to female circumcision
but can also mean to fasten with a clasp or buckle; “while piercing is primarily done
for erotic reasons, it has often been used to prohibit sexual indulgence - though to
those of the bondage and discipline persuasion, even such restraint is doubtless
erotic.“h Infibulation.
The action of infibulating;
especially the fastening of the
sexual organs with a fibula or clasp. Infibulation
was an operation performed on
young boys and singers by the Romans, who used it as a muzzle to human incontinence. Piercing is thus not at all a new practice: “the proud Roman centurions,
Caesar’s bodyguards, wore nipple rings as a sign of their virility and courage, and as
a dress accessory for holding their short capes.“’ However, piercing today’s body has
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different meanings than it did in Roman times: it is an act of resistance that violates
the beauty norms set by the mainstream fashion-entertainment-advertising
complex* and re-appropriates
a time-worn lieu of sexuality and fashion. In the West of
the fashion-entertainment-advertising
complex, the body can be conceived as a site
of opposition to corporate homogenization
and control because it is a surface upon
which the “me” of the self meets the “I” of the gazing public. Considered as such,
piercing is a form of mastery that is sexual and body-centred, wherein mind’s
devices service the pleasures of the flesh. In north-west Kenya, in contrast, the
complex’s norms, based on a nebulous mind-body split, do not apply,
By outwardly wearing the signs of inner states, combined with the signs
of events and effects impinging on the body from the acts of others, the
Turlcana convert their skin into public surfaces, inscribed with visual
statements of social potential9
The Turkana show that dichotimization
is but one, non-essential, way of
conceiving the relation between body and mind.
I$y first inkling of angels is the sense that I am heading into a house of
worship when we arrive at Urban Primitives. There, one speaks of piercing in
hushed tones, as though connecting with another level of being or a wider community to which only the initiate truly accede. We walk upstairs to the.offtces and
enter, for want of a better word, a buzz of activity. Not the buzz of flesh, but a buzz
of society. The reception room is full of people. Two staff members are on duty and
both know Shannon. A large heavy-set man with dark Rod-Stewart hair, unshaven
beard and moustache, black T-shirt with cut-off sleeves and dark sparkling eyes
greets us. “Hi Shannon! How are you ?” he says brightly. Tattoos slide down his
arms, staring at me, sizing me up. “Hi Shannon! Nice to see you again.” His,
colleague sports tattoos on both arms. Nose pierced one, two, three times. Ears
covered with rings from the lower lobes up around and inside. Same Rod-Stewart
hair, but shorter, lesbian-identified.
“I need to get my earring soldered,” Shannon
smiles broadly.
Two male suburban mall rats scurry in, looking around in wonder. A large
poster for an international
tattooing convention in Europe hangs on the wall. A
well-dressed East Asian business type sits primly, waiting his turn, a Globe and Mail
folded on his lap, a slightly absent: expression on his face. A younger rocker strides
in, does a 360 gape at the tattoo patterns on the wall and leaves.
Precession de toutes les determinations venues d’ailleurs, illisibles,
indechiffrables, peu importe, I’essentiel est d’epouser la forme &range de
n’importe quel evenement, de n’importe quel objet, de n’importe quel
Ctre fortuit, puisque de toute facon vous ne saurez jamais qui vous &es.
Aujourd’hui oh les gens ont perdu leur ombre, il est de toute n&essite
cl’etre suivi par quelqu’un, aujourcl’hui oh chacun perd sespropres
traces, il est de toute urgence que quelqu’un se mette dam vos traces,
m&me si par Ia il les efface et vous fait disparaitre, c’est une forme
d’obligation symbolique qui se joue, une forme enigmatique de liaison
et de d&ison.‘O
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“You’ll be seeing Eroshia,” the lesbian-identified
woman says, ushering us out
of the room, to the right, down a short narrow hallway and into another offtce. The
room resembles a dental or physician’s of&e. White walls, the calm spiritual pop
sound of “Dead Can Dance” and cleanliness. A kitchen unit has been whitewashed, a grey Ikea countertop is installed alongside the sink across from a whitevinyl lounge chair that comes pretty close to being a dentist’s chair. “She’ll be with
you in a minute.”
Shannon eases into the white-vinyl lounge chair. I sit on a chair across from
her, a large shelf unit next to my left shoulder, the door onto the hallway to my
right. Eroshia comes in. Small, dark, vaguely playful, demonic. A dark angel. A
tattoo on one arm. Earrings through her nose. I suddenly spot a framed photo
entitled “Eroshia” on my right, next to the door. An out-of-focus colour print
depicts an open mouth. A blurred earring line crosses the fussy lower lip. “I need to
have my tiny perfect Buddha soldered onto this earring or I just know that 1’11lose
it. It’s a gift from Gad and I can’t lose it.” “Okay, Shannon, that’s easy.” Eroshia
turns to the earring, works on it briefly and stands back to look at the results.
Without notice Shannon says, “You know, Eroshia, I think I’m ready to get my
nipple pierced. I’ve always wanted to get my nipple pierced, the left nipple, on the
same side as the tiny perfect Buddha. Can you do it today?” “No problem Shannon.
Are you sure that you want to go ahead with it?” Eroshia stands back and eyes
Shannon, A tiny smirk appears. “Absolutely. I just left my master. I’m ready to be
my own master. ” Shannon is deadly serious. I’ve seen that look before. The blue
eyes are bluer, the eyes are set on their target and not letting go. Mastery for her
means making this decision and holding to, it,
No diviniry shall cast lots for you, but you shall choose your own deity.
Let him to whom falls the first lost first select a life to which he shall
cleave of necessity.
But virtue has no master over her, and each shall have
more or less of her as he honours her or does her despite. The blame is
his who chooses. God is blameless.”
“I’ve always wanted to get my nipple pierced,” I blurt out, “I like the look.”
Eroshia shifts her steady look onto me. Dark light flashes in her eyes. “You know,
you’ll come back here someday to have it done.” “Hmmph.. .doubters,” I think.
There are limits to what even I do for fashion. “I don’t think I could go through
with it,” I say calmly. I half- c 1ose my left eye and slowly shake my head from side to
side as I say this.
Turning to Shannon, Eroshia says in a dead-pan voice “If you’re really sure
that you want to go ahead with a piercing, you’ll have to sign forms. 1’11 explain
how to take care of it and show you how to prevent infection. I’ll go an’ get the
rings so that you can choose one.” Shannon nods agreement to go ahead. Eroshia
leaves the room. “She’s an apprentice. She’ll be a master someday. You can see it
already. She’s really good,” Shannon explains.
, . .interviewees
were not interested
in pain at all; and those who were
insisted that the word ‘pain’ was redundant,
given that their activities
were geared toward creating pleasurable
rather than unpleasurable
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‘sensations’. They also preferred the terms ‘master’ and ‘slave’ to ‘sadist’
and ‘masochist’, because these better described the motives and nature of
the sex games they played.. .the Sadist runs the scene; the Masochist sets
the limits. The Masochist says what you can’t use and how far you can
go. But within that, the Sadist can do anything.‘*
I nod my head, trying to follow. A vague dizziness belches up from my
stomach. “I just hope I don’t faint or something.” “Would you faint? Would it
bother you to stay?” ‘II can’t look at needles or at my own blood during tests,” I
laugh. It took me years to do an HIV test because I can’t stand the sight of my own
blood. But I want to stay to share Shannon’s experience or some such horseshit. I
cringe inwardly at the thought of a painful piercing. Ripped flesh. “I’ll be fine.” Or
at least I decide that I should be fine if I want to play a role in this scenario. I lean
back, sigh, and think of the awards for best supporting roles at the Oscars. “Are you
sure you’ll be all right?” Eroshia asks me, entering the room. We are in her domain
now. She has to be in control, it is crucial. “Sure.” I lean slightly to my left, into the
shelf unit.
Eroshia holds a small grey padded board with about thirty earrings pinned
onto it. She offers the board to Shannon, who carellly eyes the selection. They talk
about the advantages and disadvantages of several models. Shannon chooses a
round gold earring with a small nob on one side. Aesthetically, it is quite okay, but I
get a little more dizzy, feeling as well as I would if offered to choose what type of
shovel I would like to use if I were being forced to bludgeon someone to death.
Silver or gold head? These new Italian handgrips are really comfortable. My
instincts are telling me to leave! leave! leave the room! I have a flash of the kill floor
in the slaughterhouse where I worked for about a month in my early twenties. I can
still distinctly smell freshly killed pigs and cattle when I think of that. Never will
forget. I look at Shannon. Yep, she’s gonna do it. That look, open blue eyes now
slightly level under her thin eyebrows, says it all. I decide to stay to check it out, to
“support” her, to save face, to see what piercing is all about. The mix of performance piece and dental surgery in this scene is odd, but intrigues me.
Eroshia is assuming a look not unlike that of my former colleagues at the
slaughterhouse. Working with flesh of any sort necessitates bureaucratic detachment, whether it’s chicken breasfs or Shannon’s breast. The need for both distance
and immediacy makes body modification
or SM an intellectual and physical
challenge. Eroshia is abstracting the process into a business deal, but understands
that Shannon is investing in the spiritual energy of the piercing. This mix of mind’s
tools for body’s ends is her own growing mastery. As a participant-observer,
I see
Eroshia abstract, and grow into more and more of a dark angel, a demon. An ageold concurrence of pain, emotion, devotion and ecclesiastical offXaldom
rematerializes,
Christ of the Flagellation in Ottonian art wears a long robe; he embraces
the column with both arms, his hands are either held by a servant or are
bound, his feet are not tied. Since whipping was an official act of the
judiciary and took place in the praetorium, this building is nearly always
Digital
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225
from the tenth century onwards represented by various architectural
motif, The column which supports the roof is aho the whipping
column, It therefore has a base and capital and is taller than Christ, even
in images containing no spatial details. A German ivory plaque, which
probably formed part of an antependium given by Otto I to the
cathedraI at Magdeburg, shows Christ being whipped in front of Pilate,
who sits in the praetorium gazing as though spellbound at Christ. The
ceremony of washing the hands is obviously over; servant, basin and jug
simply allude to it. Manuscript illuminations portray the procurator
either standing, as in the Codex Egberti, or seated, as in an Echternach
Book of Pericopes (2nd quarter of the 1 lth century). His raised hands
and pointing fingers must indicate his command to whip Christ.13
Eroshia leaves the room, muttering that the ring will not fit Shannon’s nipple.
“She’s giving me a chance to back out,” Shannon says, “they always do this. It’s a
sign of a good master.” I have no doubt but that Eroshia is setting the scene. And
that Shannon is carefully defining the limits. Eroshia returns. “I think that this ring
will work after all. It could be a little bigger, but you’ll see that it’ll be fine. You can
replace it later if you want.” Out of stock, I think to myself. Good salesperson. “I’m
ready to go ahead if you are,” she says smiling.
Shannon wants to do the piercing on the floor. She strips off her shirt and
pants with lightning speed, ready to get on with it, eager to embrace mastery. She
sits down in the middle of the floor with her heels underneath her buttocks and
knees spread. She sticks out her tits and stretches her hands back to touch the floor
behind her on each side. “How’s this?” she asks in a professional manner, smiling,
her back arching and fingertips stretching. I almost laugh aloud, amazed at her
seizure of the moment. Eroshia, slightly more reserved, looks at her with anticipation and amusement. “Fine, really. I’ve never done one like this before, but it’s a
great idea.” Eroshia brings out a small grey box. Shannon kneels down once more
in her black Calvin Klein’s and black boots. I look at her nipples. Rosy red, pointy
and boyish. Joyous nipples, curious about the world. Eroshia takes a set of what
look like long pointed pliers from the box. I lean into my corner, eclipsing Shannon’s left nipple with her right shoulder. Eroshia asks if she is ready. Shannon is.
Eroshia lines up her pliers. Okay, breathe three times slowly. I’m going to do it as
you let out the third breath. One.. .two.. . three.. .
Fakir Musafar says that those who embrace body alteration reject
the Western cultural biases about ownership and use of the body. We
believed that our body belonged to us. We had rejected the strong
Judeo-Christian body programming and emotional conditioning to
which we had all been subjected. Our bodies did not belong to some
distant god sitting on a throne; or to that god’s priest or spokesperson;
or to a father, mother, or spouse; or to the state ot its monarch, ruler, or
dictator; ot to social institutions of the military, education4 correctionaI, or medical establishment. And the kind of language used to
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describe our behaviour (“self-mutilation”),
prejudicial form of control.‘4
was in itself a negative and
Fakir’s radical re-appropriation
of the corporeal responds to the seizure of the
body by medical and legal sciences in the nineteenth century. Bodily pleasure had
to conform to abstract notions of the “natural” since this is what medical and legal
sciences believed they were “discovering.”
In fact, the seizure produced a standardization of bodily sensation within specific limits, limits that I suddenly realize
Shannon is transgressing big time, as she forges onward into the land of nonprocreative pleasure. In the 199Os, Fakir’s riposte also challenges the ejection/
rejection of the body by a technologically
obsessed society along with the hierarchies that this entails (mind over body, rich over poor, white over colour, hetero
over homo, “health” over “sickness,” specialist over non-specialist).
By modifying or
altering the body, Fakir and others undertake
a deeply meaningful, transformative act. This self-fashioning impulse
leads to an individtializing of the body and seems directly related to the
struggle to create a sense of identity in a society felt to be dehumanizing,
alienating, and characterized by increasing conformity.. , individuality,
personal beliefs, sense of aesthetics, and oppositional stance must be
articulated through the body and tangibly inscribed on.. . flesh.15
Although body modification
in the West cannot appropriate non-Western
practices and preserve the latter’s signification,
taking the Turkana attitude into
account, for example, throws new light on practices within our own culture.
To refine and substantiate Fakir’s critique, we might fLrther ask whether body
alteration rejects Judeo-Christian
culture or (more precisely) rhe obsessive technoscientific-economic
mindset of its Enlightenment-Victorian
offspring. In other
words, condemning
“Jude0-Christian”
values in general ignores that the term is a
cultural artefact like any other and, as such, susceptible to manipulation
as time
washes away outer armour and older layers of meaning stand newly exposed. The
“tales” told about our culture must be questioned. We must ask who tells them,
who edits them and why they do so in what way. Most tales of the body that we
receive simply serve hegemonic mind-over-body
marketing. If we re-read flagellation, for example, in light of Fakir’s point of view, the “passion” of martyrs becomes
much less abstract and could turn Enlightenment-Victorian
notions of the body on
their head.‘” By re-casting life as technologically
(Internet) centred in a context in
which political disempowerment
i,s accentuating (via austerity measures that leave
no room for political debate or policy alternatives), the priests of mind-over-body
marketing and their information
“revolution”
ironically make a radical physical reappropriation
of the body possible by leaving the mass of the population with little
else beyond their own corporeity. Instead of a noble vessel or source of sin, the body
is highlighted
as a site of authentic emotic&-spiritual
affirmation
for those who
practice body modification. I7 Radical “body praxis” is not an unprecedented
example of popular corporeal response to disempowerment
and social crisis,
Digital
Medieval
self-flagellation
themselves
in the hope
away his rod, to forgive
Delirium
227
was a grim torture which people inflicted
on
of inducing
a judging
and punishing
God to put:
them their sins, to spare them the greater
chastisements which would otherwise be theirs in this life and the next.
Yet beyond mere forgiveness lay another, still more intoxicating
prospect. If even an orthodox friar could see in his own bleeding body
an image of the body of Christ,
it is not surprising
that laymen who
became flagellants
and then escaped from ecclesiastical
supervision
should often have felt themselves
to be charged with a redemptive
mission which would secure not only their own salvation
but that of all
mankind.
Like the crusading
pauperes before them, heretical
flagellant
sects saw their penance as a collective
imitutio Christi possessing a
unique;eschatologicaI
value.‘*
Just as SM practitioners follow in the footsteps of medieval flagellants, postpunk neo-tribalism
takes the ancient Western cultural tool of body decoration and
uses it to challenge contemporary
society’s artificial mind-body
dichotomy. Rather
than a juxtaposition
of nature/body and spirit/mind
as described by Irigaray, “where
thought is separated from effect, thought being a logical construction for truths
beyond earthly contingencies, which are associated more with affects, with nature,“” piercing, tattoos and scarification apply modern technology to design a
sensation. Mind thus turns to satisfying body’s pleasures by creating new emotions,
new pleasures for a formerly neglected vessel, one seen as stolid, impassive, and
.needing mastery. Through body modification,
the body sets the scene, defines its
needs and sets its limits. This focus on body’s needs alongside those of mind
undermines a cruel society that strokes’out the needs of body through accounting
procedures. These witch-hunts are carried out in the name of mind, of abstraction,
of the categorisation of human beings in the name of efficient management.
Calling all angels.
Angel. Dafmon or daimdnion: supernatural presence or entity, somewhere
between a god (theos) and a hero:
The
belief
in supernatural
spirits somewhat
less anthropomorphized
is a very early feature of Greek popular
religion; one
such dafmon is attached to a person at birth and determines,
for good or
evil, his fate (compare
the Greek word for happiness,
euduimonia,
having a good dafn~on).~~
than the Olympians
I recoil into my corner, feeling sucked into the event by a powerful magnetizing force, but not daring to look. Eroshia, intent on the nipple, centred, concentrating, is unaware of anything around her so that her work is professionally done. I
turn my head to the wall, waiting to hear a quick “clip” as I imagine I will. With the
dark angel distracted by her craft and my eyes covered, the angels have a chance to
do their work. Do I hear a rustle of white robes or the flapping of wings as I cringe
in the corner? Is there a slight breeze as events move forward? I don’t exactly know.
The room falls away. Noise and perception draw away from us on all sides,
retreating, then turning and rushing in with the force, noise and intensity of the
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oceans. I hear angels start to sing in a chorus. The voices are very high, very pure,
innocent yet knowing, like yet unlike children singing. I know in my solar plexus
that these are not children singing. A very pure breath of air colours my perceptions. The light becomes white. There is no scent, only a faint and pleasant warmth
that oddly reassures. A tidal force :pushes us upward and the heavens open. The
things of the world swirl downward away from us. Faster and faster they turn down
and away. Small bands of black form a few feet away and begin to spin around and
around. Then thick yellow bands appear between the black ones. The second bands
are dark enough to highlight patterns, shapes, and people and worldly forms. Both
sets of bands continue to swirl around us, then rise rapidly like an inverted tornado
that pulls the three of us upward. Faster and faster we turn, the yellow turning
deeper, the angels singing, screaming, laughing.
On peut considerer l’energie comme une cause qui produit des effets,
mais aussi comme un effet qui se reproduit lui-meme, et done cesse
d’obtir a toute causalite. Le paradoxe de I’energie est qu’elle est a la fois
une revolution des causes et une revolution des effets, quasiment
independantes I’une de l’autre, et qu’elle devient le lieu non seulement
d’un enchainement des causes, mais d’un dechainement des effets.*’
I shrink into the corner of my chair, having no sense of where or who I am.
In front of me, Shannon leans bac:k and began to.. . laugh/scream/wail/laugh/laugh/
laugh (“it looks excruciating painful, but it’s not - it’s funny!“**). Eroshia hangs
determinatedly
onto her tit for what seems a long time, “clipping”
it firmly.
Shannon screams with laughter, leans forward into Eroshia’s left shoul,der, placing
her forehead on the shoulder.
Do I see Shannon, eyelids fluttering, throw her right arm behind her, the left
arm remaining around the neck of Eroshia, who looks on steadily and adoringly as
Shannon trembles imperceptibly, her skin turning ivory as a drop of blood slowly
runs from the corner of her mouth above her wounded and now deeply pink
nipple? Does Shannon’s sigh call forth a great hush, as though the world holds its
breath and the heavens pause to take notice? Do I see Shannon suddenly turn pale
in rich blue tumbling robes as a faint light glows warmly over her brow?. . .no, I do
not.
. . .as we have just pointed out, whatever comes to pass, comes to pass
according to laws and rules which involve eternal necessity and truth;
nature, therefore, always observes laws and rules which involve eternal
necessity and truth, although they may not all be known to us, and
therefore she keeps a fLved and immutable order.. .it is certain that the
ancients took for a miracle whatever they could not explain by the
method adopted by the unlearned in such cases,namely, an appeal to
the memory, a recalling of zsomething similar, which is ordinarily
regarded without wonder.. ,u
which
The swirling begins to slow. White light begins to filter through the room,
itself has re-appeared. A strange ritual calm takes hold. I float in the heavens,
Digital
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229
arms and legs waving, looking down into the room, trying to find my way back to
the body. Shannon sits on the floor, patiently waiting, absorbed by her nipple,
cradling her breast. Eroshia re-assumes the air of a bureaucrat of piercing, an oddly
priest-like role, having initiated another adept to her cult. This dark angel has again
played out an ancient drama. Suddenly, I’m in the room. Shannon turns to me and
I see a flash of fear in her eyes and, beyond, a deeper torrent of pain/joy at the
realization of self-ness.
le C~XIKbattait, elle respirait, assise,les yeux vitreux, saris rien voir. Et c’a
et6 fini: “Les docteurs disaient qu’elle s’etreindrait comme une bougie:
ce nest pas ca, pas ca du tout, a dit ma soeur en sanglotant. - Mais,
Madame, a repondu la garde, je vous assure que c’a et.6une mort tres
douce.“24
It costs $147, taxes included. We have to immediately go out onto the street
to get money from a bank machine. The automobile exhaust is choking and the
sharp light of day slices into me. It is five p.m., rush hour and Church Street is
filled with cruising boys. The angels are gone, lost to the bustle and worry of
everyday existence, to mind’s pursuit of mind’s needs.
Le pire, c’est la comprehension, qui n’est qu’une fonction sentimentale
et inutile. La veritable connaissance, c’est celle de ce que nous ne
comprendrons jamais dam I’autre, de ce qui dam l’autre fait que cet
autre n’est pas soi-meme, et done ne peut &re separe de soi, ni alien6 par
notre regard, ni institue dans son identite ou dam sa difference.z5
As my screen glows, time to stop, I can’t help but wonder “are angels calling
to me, their light shining a call for help and a comfort?” Or is the screen another
pathetic imitation, another tool that we don’t know how to use except as an
extension of a fearsome will to control? The sounds of the world wash in. At this
end of century, as the world moves feverishly (intensified spiritual hum or mass
marketing?), as the planet and its populations groan under an unsustainable burden
of pain, suffering, hunger, injustice, environment
deterioration,
mass murder and
disease, ancient body-centred spirituality offers a re-connection with the physicalness that is no less human than the mind. The contemporary twist on the old form
validates “me.” Hearing angels sing is an intensely non-cyber experience, celestial
voyeurism for me as it lands up - no cost, no tax, no punishment, no censure, no
mass distribution,
no guilt. An afftrmation of self, identity and the reality of
authentic (as opposed to virtual) experience. A connection of the mind to the
passions and to love, beginning in love of self and in offering pleasure, a treasured
gift, to oneself. A rare delicacy for body and mind in the cybernet nineties.
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Notes
1. Edmund Spenser, fragment of Sonnet 88, “Amoretti,” Books I and II of The Faerie Queene,
The Mutability
Cantor and Sekctionsfiom
the Minor Poetry (edited by Robert Kellogg and
Oliver Steele), New York: The Odyssey Press, 1965, p. 466.
2. Gertrud Schiller, Iconography
of Christian
Art, I/01. 2: The Passion ofJew
Christ, London:
Lund Humphries, 1972, p. 67.
3. See http://www.statcan.ca/. No angels there.
4. Plato, “Socrates’ Defense” (Apology), 27d, in Plato: The Collected Dialogues (edited by
Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns), Princeton University Press, 1978, p. 14.
5. Augustine, City of God (edited by David Knowles), Penguin Books: 1980, pp. 439-440.
6. V. Vale and Andrea Juno, Modern Primitives:
Tattoo, Piercing, Scar;fcation,
San Francisco:
RelSearch Publications, 1989, p. 26.
7. Modern
Primitives,
p, 25.
8. The fashion-entertainment-advertising
complex refers to the corporate sector whose focus
is the reification and marketing of a homogenized vision of the human body. The sector
sets a model of the human form alongside which we are invited to measure ourselves. The
lack of alternative images endows this model with its hegemonic character. We see the
images of the fashion-entertainment-advertising
complex in Demi Moore, Ma&y Mark
and Calvin Klein models. The message is that pleasure belongs to those meeting corporate
standards of beauty, usually, in fact, those who are able workout 6 hours a day and/or
willing to submit to costly and painful surgery. The imposing physicality that piercing
initially evokes in many people pales alongside the torn flesh of cosmetic surgery. In fact,
the two practices may only be different insofar as their “social-class site” is concerned.
Piercing is a less costly and therefore more “popular and democratic” cultural practice.
9. Vigdis Broth-Due, “Making Meaning Out of Matter: Perceptions of Sex, Gender and
Bodies among the Turkana,” in Broth-Due, Vigdis, Ingrid Rudie and Tone Bleie, Carved
Flesh/Cast
Selves: Gendered Symbols and Social Practices, Oxford: Berg, 19 93, p. 71.
10. Jean Baudrillard, La transparence du mal: Essai sur hphenomenes
extremes, Editions
Galilee, 1990, p. 170-l.
11. Plato, “Republic”: X, 61i’e, in Plato: The Collected Dialogues (edited by Edith Hamilton
and Huntington Cairns), Princeton University Press, 1978, p. 84 1.
12. Bill Thompson, Sadomasochism:
Phinjid Perversion
or Pleasurable Play?, London: Cassell,
1994, pp. 136-7.
13. Schiller, pp. 66-67.
14. Fakir Mu&r,
“Body Play: State of Grace or Sickness?,” in Armando R. Favazza, Bodies
Under Siege: Self-Mutilation
and Body Modification
in Culture andP?ycbiaq
(2nd
edition), Baltimore, Maryland: The John Hopkins University Press, 1996, p. 326.
15. Daniel Wojcik, Punk and Neo-Trihal
Body Art, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi,
1995. p. 34.
16. Indeed, it even turns our notions of the Victorian period on their head: “The Prince
Albert, called a ‘dressing ring’ by Victorian haberdashers, was originally used to firmly
secure the male genitalia in either the left or right pant leg during that era’s craze for
extremely tight, crotch-binding trousers, thus minimizing a man’s natural endowment.
Legend has it that Prince Albert wore such a ring to retract his foreskin and thus keep his
member sweet-smelling so as not to offend the Queen.” Modern Primitives,
p, 25.
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231
17. Body modification is in fact widespread in the West. The transformation of bodybuilding
from socio-cultural marginalization to a widely-practice form of physical self-affirmation
and the appearance of (pardon the pun) a sizeable population of obese persons in
contemporary North America are two examples of attempts to aff?rm selfhood and
identity through body modification. See, for example, Alan M. Klein, Little Big Men:
Bodybuilding
Subculture
and Gender Construction (Albany: State University of New York
Press, lYY3), especially chap. 9: “Comic-Book Masculinity and Cultural Fiction.”
18. Norman Cohn, The Purwit ofthe Millennium,
NY: Essential Books, 1958, pp. 127-8.
19. Lute Irigaray, i love to you: Sketchjr
a Felicity Within History (Ahson Martin, trans.),
NewYork: Routledge, 1996, p. 116.
20. EE. Peters, Greek Philosophical
Terms: A Historical
L&con,
New York: New York
University Press; 1967, p. 33.
21. Baudrillard, p. 106-7.
22. Modern Primitives,
p. 130.
23. Benedict de Spinoza, A Theologico-Polirical
Treatise andA Polirical Treatise (translated by
R.H.M. Lewis), New York: Dover Publications, 1951, pp. 83-84.
24. Simone de Beauvoir, Line mart tres dome, Editions GaIlimard, 1964, p. 137.
25. Baudrillard, p. 153.
Discovering CyberAhtarctic
An Interview with Knowbotics Research
15~0
LoAtzori
The world presents itself to us, effectively.
J. BaudnYkzrd
Which worlds?
Knowbotics
Research
Knowbotics Research (KR+cF) develops hybrid models of knowledge
generation. These models are complex dynamic fields which produce an exchange
between virtual agents, poetic machines and interactive visitors. They enable an
observer to participate in the physical exploration and construction of networked
rules and strategies of the new public spheres. KR+cF outlines technoid events in
parallel real and virtual spaces to investigate the experience of the multiple layers of
reality. These extensions of the culltural environment
provoke new cultural and
aesthetic parameters in order to prevent an ideological closed circuit in an information based society. KR+cF - Yvonne Wilhelm, Alexander Tuchacek, Christian
Htibler - is based in Cologne, at the Academy for Media Arts. In partnership with
Westbank Industries and Tactile Technology, KR+cF has founded Membrane,
a
laboratory for media strategies. KR+cF has won several major international
Media
Art Awards, including: Prix Ars Electronica 93, Golden Nica for Interactive Art;
German Media Art Award, and ZKM Karlsruhe 9 5.
Paolo Atzori:
Last November in Hamburg during “Interface3”
you finally installed
your new work, “Dialogue with the Knowbotic South.” What is the topic of your
discourse?
Christian
Htibfer:
Our approach is to focus on the scientific world in reference to
the South Pole and to study the codes used by scientists of the Antarctic who make
computer simulations. We intend to offer a model for a discourse between different
fields of the communications
world. From an artistic point of view, our project
formalizes the problem of a missing language.
A dialogue beginning from the state of a missing language..
starting point for your new artistic activity or a hypotheti&l
limit?
Atzori:
. Is this the
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233
Hiibler: One has to discard one’s own old language. How shall we discuss what we
are doing? We don’t debate with journalists and critics only but also exchange ideas
with the scientists. It really becomes a problem if we don’t have a language.
Yvonne Wilhelm: It’s a development of our own history as artists, as aesthetic beings;
you have to log in into your own history.. .
Atzari: How do you formulate the discourse about nature between the different
artistic and scientific dimensions?
Htibfer: We work with hypotheses since natural scientists are dealing with hypothetical issues, as they have throughout
the century. When they simulate nature on
their computers they project systems into the future, pushing forward the meaning
of time. For the first time, scientists not only prove the laws of nature, they also
formulate conditions of possible systems. In our project we treat an actual state of
nature corresponding
to our information
culture: the scientific definition of nature
through communication
systems and powerful computers. This way of working
changes the meaning of nature itself because nature has always been culturally
defined.
Wihelm: Reality is culturally
time question reality.
defined too. We investigate
nature but at the same
Atzori: A concept that changes with time. Do you want to point out an idea of
reality more fitting to our contemporary times?
Htibler: Our bigger concern is the topic ofWirklichkeitskonzept.
With the term
“virtual reality” you can define a dimension that belongs to the computer. This is
just play, but I think we play in accordance with rules of games dealing with
phenomena which really have an effect on our personal life. The question is no
longer what nature is, rather, what kind of nature do we want. We are embodied in
the process of how nature merges, with the ability to go into the system and to
change and manipulate it. We have to include in our research the term “real” (das
Reale), what comes out from the reality conception. We don’t know if we really can
discuss about Das Reale. It is a very delicate thing; in our work dealing with nature
we must also deal with the economy and politics.
Atzori: We can say that Knowbotic Research is searching for an artistic definition of
nature, a possible reality, in the Information Age through models and data that
come directly from the world of scientific research. How would you describe your
intellectual experience with the scientists? Did you find that your ideas corresponded with theirs?
Htibkr: Most of the scientists still think in accordance with the mechanistic world
view - for instance their theory of chaos is deterministic. They want just to prove
their laws confirming
the construction of science. If is there anything they cannot
put in the body of science they think the question is wrong. They don’t think their
work methods are wrong. Here’s an example: if they have a simulation model
running on a computer and get actual data from a satellite that do not fit into the
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simulation, they conclude that the satellite has committed an error. Some people
would argue that perhaps the simulation is wrong. We believe scientists should
venture forward even at the risk of leaving the academic domain of science behind.
AtzorL Don’t you think too many scientists are affected by heavy political/economic demands?
Htibkr: Last summer in Hamburg when we joined some scientists at the German
polar research institute of Bremerhaven (AWI), we realized how powerful the
connections between science and politics and economics are. Many scientists do
visual simulation only to legitimize their work to the politicians and secure funding
for more projects, not because they want to find something new with the visual
simulation language. Most of the scientists saw visualization in this context, and
this is disappointing.
As I explained earlier we started our project with natural
scientists because we thought they deal with hypothetical questions involving all the
new concepts of science like the theory of the inner observer, complex dynamics
and self organization. We were mostly interested in the research of dynamic
processes. We wanted to find out how they determined the way in which the results
of this research changes their knowledge of Antarctica.
There is a kind of synthesis of scientific knowledge applied to a special
environment
in an interactive form where one can observe the work of scientists
giving an interpretation
and a simulation of natural processes. At the same time
some scientists are developing new ways of representating the scientific methodology too. Do you want to provide the scientists with a free platform where they can
exchange and debate their research?
Atzori:
Htibler: We want to create a field of discourse freed from the rules of the specialists
disciplines. It is a field not only for natural scientists but also for scholars and
philosophers who are discussing current ideas of reality. We start from the scientific
material because Knowbotic Research is interested in hybrid knowledge, in the
integration of facts in fiction.
The cybernetics of Norbert Wiener was the first attempt to initiate a new
sense of science arising out of the epistemological
meeting of research from different
disciplines in order to break the borders of isolation. We are living again in a time
where everything is always more and more specialized, and everybody follows his
method like a dogma that can hardly be discussed. Do you consider cybernetics a
good background for your ideas?
Atari:
Wilhelm: Our world view is based on what we see in the future, a worldwide data
space induced by the communication
technologies, filled with tons of information
coming from all different disciplines of knowledge. I think it is very important to
create models which focus on the needs and possibilities of the person who tries to
receive this information.
We are dealing with questions of strategies that support
human perception. Furthermore,
the concept of nature in our work does not come
from the scientists; we only use their data. Our work is also a liberation from
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235
science. We create an environment
where, initially, we fabricate actu’al phenomena
of scientific thinking. But we emancipate these phenomena from their reference
(science) by a self-organization
model.
Atwri:
Let’s speak more specifically
about your work.. .
Hiibler: Our installation “Dialogue with the Knowbotic South” is unlike our
previous work “Simulationspace
Mosaic of Mobile Datasounds” (SMDK), a
functional work. The new concept is based on knowbots, which generate a vision in
a data-network.
They originate a hypothetical nature, a Computer Aided Nature
(CAN). The main problem for the knowledge robots is that we are dealing with two
bigger entities, the so called reference nature that is still very powerful in the
Antarctic, one of the few almost intact ecological systems, and the related scientific
institutions. The knowbots act with completely different kinds of inputs, originating a tension so you can’t bring these two worlds really together. This produces an
aesthetic field for artists. Virtual reality means that you are inside the computer box
closed to the outside. Knowbotic reality means you are in a zone of different worlds,
totally aware of the dynamic processes in different worlds. We are interested in
finding a form for this concept. Each knowbot carries information
about several
Antarctic research projects that are running at the moment. It is not a scientific
knowbot because we incorporate very different phenomena related to different
research programs. This incorporation
of phenomena of actual research in a
Computer Aided Nature shapes the knowbot. We have designed a visual form for
every knowbot’s algorithm corresponding
to the data sets. The agents (knowbots)
work as connectors of processes. This point represents a new idea for the artwork.
We do not have an interface anymore, a mechanical interface, in the real world, we
have interfaces in the network, the dynamic network. If the processes associated
with the knowbots and/or the research projects change, the knowbots will change
too, following the modification
of ideas in the world of research. This leads to
forms of artificial creativity implemented
in these agents. The agent should be open
to other ways of thinking. For instance;we outline interfaces for philosophers
allowing the possibility of reaching them and determining
other outlines for the
knowbot.
Atzori: Is the shape of the agents strictly related to some kind of processes? Are there
different categories of agents, each with a specific architecture at both levels,
algorithmic
and visual?
Wilhelm: The shape is only a metaphor for a model. We define borders for our
model. The borders we are investigating and developing imply a kind of representation, not specialized but interactive.
Atzori: So there is no symbolism,
no allegory?
Hiibkr: Maybe some new things emerge. In the work represented here all the agents
are autogenerative. They are connected to processes on the Internet which change
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continuously. These agents always modify themselves. They also offer points of
interest which can be activated by the observer of the installation. Thus the
knowbot will also mutate and react according to the interest of the visitor.
Atzori: What is the logic you follow to develop the agents? Where
first input to design them?
do you find the
Hiibler: The first outlines of the knowbot relate to visual material that is used in the
research fields mixed with our creativity.. . For example one agent refers to the
computer simulation of the tide of the Antarctic sea; we develop a model and write
an interface for data from satellite observation. The interesting thing is that we deal
with processes you can’t see in reality. Hidden processes, sometimes extremely small
or extremely big, and very complex. Furthermore you can’t live in the Antarctic,
which means you can’t experience its reality directly or empirically without the help
of technology. Actually, for the scientists it no longer makes sense to work directly
in contact with nature. They need data, intelligent data for their terminals in the
institutes. And intelligent data means that you install robots and automata which
live there year-round, periodically sending raw data. Only a few scientists need to
go there to maintain the fimctionaliry
of these robots. Sometimes they put sensors
on the animals living in the Antarctic continent. These sensors are directly connected to computers. They ex-territoriahze
their nature in the networks. Maybe our
artistic work is a kind of re-territorialization.
Wilhelm: The important point is not to discuss the meaning of measures, but rather
how can we visualize and handle this complexity of information.
That’s a problem
for the scientists too. There are so many data: how can we turn it into information
and knowledge, how can we handle this with the. knowledge we have?
Atzori: You said about this new work that it maintains the state of process, not only
for the interactivity but also because it keeps itself constantly updated. Since we
cannot follow the whole information
processing you make a selection of the
information
displayed inside the simulation space otherwise it would be a completely chaotic system since the information
that comes in almost in real time. How
do you make this kind of classification?
Hid&r: It is necessary to define a strategy about order and the generation
of new
things. With computers we analyz fragments of the reality and at the same time we
build and initiate complex processes. This is what the work is about. You can’t deal
directly with data fields and databases to make a model only by analysis; you get
millions of data the human brain is unable to perceive. To outline a model that
simulates one year of a certain natural process you need “giga-tons” of data to keep
the simulation running. You really have to find new criteria, new formulations
or
maybe new bodies (we call them “incorporations”)
to construct, visualize and
perceive such models.
Atzori: Your previous installation “Simulations
Mosaic Raum” was a self-organized
system consisting of elements of communication,
data sounds, collected through
the Internet. This work induces a new insight dimension where one misses the
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237
usual feeling for orientation:
the visitor/actor can navigate a “datascape,” the
composition
of the information
in the darkness reveals new clues of perception,
new sense of space, the space/process of information.
At the same time another level
of perception is involved using the data coming from the visitor’s interaction
converted by a motion-tracking
system into an algorithm and transferred in real
time to the “reality” of the computer. In another room another program visualizes
the floating entity of the agents with 3D computer graphics displayed by a videobeamer on a large surface. I am very interested in your concept of space where you
can implement this information
organized by the knowbots.. .
Wilhelm: Rethinking space is the
question of finding one aesthetic
defining nature and its information
the define the differences between
ences among the various concepts
main topic of the new project too. It’s not a
or a language everybody can understand but of
output, between reality and virtual space. To
discussion and discourse. To define the differof nature is itself a process.
Hiibler: It is not efficient to use sculptural terminology
but we are investigating new
concepts of “bodies.” It is not the body idea in the common, psychological meaning. Our concept of bodies comes from these kinds of entities which generate the
different layers of our reality and we look for these generators mostly in data spaces.
For us knowbots are means for incorporations
of ideas, and also of reality concepts.
This is somewhat similar to our earlier project where we had a “sound space,” a
space consisting of ideas formulated with sounds, connected by the interactive
visitor. In the simulation room one could only connect two ideas at once. We were
interested in the tensions originated between two ideas, the gap between two
sounds and not in the idea itself. In this new project we have “bodies,” complex
connectors, which link complex fields of ideas. We touch on one of the biggest
problem for science: to gain a more complex simulation it is necessary to simulate
several organisms/processes together in one program, to compare at the same time
different kinds of data. This leads to our next question: “What can you encode and
what cannot you encode?”
Atzori: Your idea of “bodies” could be interpreted as a model for artificial life,
because the knowbots are able to change themselves according to the changes in the
ideas. It’s an endless process. Once it has started, it can go on independently.
Hiibler:
Yes, but as a vision, a wish.. .
Wilhelm: In fact it does not work like artificial life. Artificial life is one-to-one
translation. We, on the other hand, take reality and the simulation together, a kind
of new function with its own borders to reality or to cyberspace. From a scientific
point of view the knowledge that you can achieve from artificial life is a fake
connection to reality. For the scientist it is just a value from which it is possible to
make some forecasts and statements, For the artist there is value if it goes out of
control.
Atzori: Many “media-works”
which are supposed to be artistic follow the Aristotelian principle of mimesis: the work is just imitating nature with a new technology.
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Here you deal with the nature without any “naturalistic”
reproduction.
We experience a complex of processes that are going on and define a new dimension of
communication.
Could we define it as a model of a digital environment?
Htibh: Yes,we are in environments where the senses of the body are connected via
interfaces to dynamic architectures. Sometimes these knowbots also have the
“mimetic” potential for dynamic processes. They represent real “data fluids” which
you can contact and transform. Mimetic not in the meaning of traditional art:
mimetic potential means the agent incorporating
the process. We can’t use the term
representation any longer because you are included now as an observer of reconstructed representations. I would like to consider this phenomenon
further.
Atzori: In your installations one fee:ls a massive use of technology. Formally the only
material one can see are computers and communication
hi-tech equipment. As
artists using this technology what is your critical position regarding the economic/
political process which operates in parallel with the information
world?
Hiibh: We are inside a technological system whose direction and speed are defined
by industry and science. Politics and arts have to follow and it is nearly impossible
to do anything without being inside. It is a confrontation
which can’t work if you
play with the traditional ways of art. You have to be inside so that you can really see
the consistency of the new technology, not only to say: “OK this is their world.”
This is our world and becomes bigger and bigger. We all depend on computers. I
try to keep my vision free to understand what is outside and deal with both of these
worlds. There are still many parts of our life which the technological system can’t
incorporate. Therefore, I define myself as an artist who can fight inside this selfregulating order. Though I know everything I do could be good for the system
because everything is connected, I fight and surrender my respect for the big
machines I am working with.
Atzori: The industrial revolution has produced one of the biggest concerns of our
time: the pollution of the environment. The South Pole is an environment
almost
untouched by the man, where it is possible to make important observation about
the environmental
problem. Many scientists are able to visualize the effects of
pollution,
but it seems they have much more difhculty uncovering its origins. For
an artist it should be more important to fight the causes and not the effects of
industrial pollution.
Wilhelm: Yes, a real solution is not fighting against the effects or against the people
who destroy the ecosystems. It’s necessary to struggle against the thinking of the
people who make these strategies, against the scientists and politicians who think
they can predict reality by comput:ing nature. It’s an old artistic strategy to make
politicians and scientists aware of the consequences of their concepts of reality.
Atzori: What’s your feeling about the time you need to produce this kind of work?
Hiibh: It always takes too long to realize a project when you work with technologies. It is a kind of paradox, not only for the technical complexity, but also for
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239
economic support. The production process of art takes longer than you want. You
can’t produce ten pieces a year. This is perhaps not understandable
in the traditional
view of art.
Atzori: As we can speak of cyberspace, virtual space, we may think of a different
notion of time. Past, future and present exist together in your installation: the past
is the work of the scientist; the present is the interaction in your installation; and
the fiuure is the potential information
going to be updated by the knowbots. How
would you define the implicit time of this work?
~Lhelm: We are familiar with the notion of cyberspace, how can we modify space,
compress space, extend space. I think you can do the same with time and the way
you experience it. We make a concept for the practice of vision. The time we try to
realize it is the present.
Maybe the work succeeds when somebody gets into our installation and
realizes that there is a complex of different and new aesthetic and cognitive structures with which to deal. We can’t offer results in our work, everybody can experiment in his own way. We offer a model which is still in discussion, which offers
different layers of nature concepts simultaneously:
a traditional physical model with
light and temperature zones, a scientific simulation with the illusion of linear
references and a networked info-aesthetic model generated by knowbots.
Htibler:
What is gained and what is lost by being digital? What do
we see when we look in the digital mirror: Future-Fallout
or Net-Utopia?Digital earsand diamond eyesor real blood
and guts?What is the relationship between being digital
and being human?
TokyoMust Be Destroyed
Dreams of Tall Buildings and Monsters:
Images of Cities and Monuments
Ken Holings
Introduction:
City of Lenses
Let us, just for one brief moment, rewrite the history of cinema in terms of
our cities; of centres and spectacles, monuments and disasters. We are coming to
the end of so many things in the closing half of this decade that greater demands
than this will be made upon us before the end of the millennium.
We could begin, for example, with the Abbasid Caliph Abu Ja’far al-Mansur,
the original founder of the ancient city of Baghdad, who conceived of his vast new
seat of government as being walled around with fortifications
and completely
circular in shape. At its exact centre, he decreed that a palace and a great mosque
should stand together. Before starting on this undertaking, however, the Caliph
ordered his army of labourers to dig a vast circular trench in the sand which was to
follow the intended outline of the city’s foundations. Oil was poured into the
trench and set alight. The Caliph then watched the blazing spectacle from a vantage
point overlooking the great river Tigris.
Who knows what hallucinatory
visions of power arose out of that shimmering circle of flames? Cities emerge from the haze as mirages on the desert plains.
Monuments
and landmarks function as lenses bringing them into focus, reducing
their size, increasing their clarity.
The towers of Las Vegas ripple in the heat: Caesar’s Palace, the great pyramid
of Luxor, the Excalibur, the Imperial Palace and the MGM Grand. Did anyone ever
suspect that the earth would be called upon to support so much history? Monuments don’t require grandeur, merely drama: a change of light. “Do you think
Robert Venturi was on drugs when he wrote that book about how great Las Vegas
was?” Andy Warhol once asked, after seeing it in daylight.
This from a man who made a notoriously static movie starring the Empire
State Building as “an eight-hour hard-on.” But even he admitted that Vegas looked
better at night, but then so did the Empire State Building:
It’s so beautiful.
The
It’s like Flash Gordon
lights come on and the stars come
riding into space.
out and it sways.
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In August 1989, Saddam Hussein decreed that his Victory Arch - two
gigantic arms, modeled upon his own, bursting forth from the ground clutching
crossed scimitars cast from the steel of melted-down
Iraqi weapons - be presented
to the people of Baghdad:
The ground bursts open and from it springs the arm that represents
power and determination, carrying the sword of Qadisiyya. It is the arm
of the Leader-President, Saddam Hussein himself (God preserve and
watch over him) enlarged forty times. It springs out to announce the
good news of victory to all Iraqis, and it pulls in its wake a net that is
filled with the helmets of the enemy soldiers, some of them scattering
into the wasteland.
In September 1990, while the Great Satan imposed Resolution 666 upon the
United Nations, restricting the importation
of food and medical supplies into the
Republic of Iraq, an archeological expedition was using radar equipment to pinpoint large objects buried in the desolate, shifting sands of the Central California
coastline believed to be sphinxes.
Beneath these dunes, members of the expedition claimed, were the actual
remains of Ramases the Magnificent’s palace; a monolithic
movie set which, in
1923, Cecil B. De Mille had commanded to be built in preparation for Hollywood’s first biblical epic, The Ten Commandments. As Operation Desert Shield
slowly gave way to the final preparations for Desert Storm, it was announced that a
111 excavation was scheduled to take place, under the direction of a professional
archaeologist, to search for these legendary monuments. Chariot wheels, plaster
horses, ceramic decorations and sta.tuary, they said, lay scattered on a vast plane of
ruins, waiting to be uncovered.
Back in 1956, De Mille had expressed the hope that in a thousand years’
time, the discovery of his film set would not lead scientists to the sensational, if
erroneous, conclusion that Egyptian civilization, far from being confined to the
Valley of the Nile, had extended all the way to the Pacific coast of North America.
As if the Ancient Egyptians had ever been that adept in the use of concrete,
nails and plaster of Paris.
The War of the Cities
In these cities constructed as vast movie sets within which the populace, like
so many extras, re-enact endless variants on the same crowd scene, what is on show
is less important than the way in which it is viewed. Where, for example, the grand
frivolities of Las Vegas are focused and reordered in the camcorder lens of the
wandering tourist, Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad has become reconfigured for Western
audiences by the optical telemetering of the guided missile.
Either way, the image ends up on your TV at home.
For the spectator, a cruise missile is nothing but a point of light in the night
sky. The digitized flight plan contained in its memory is running a continuous
movie of the terrain over which it is traveling. As the missile nears its target, moving
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from relief map to floor plan, its nose-mounted
camera prepares to transmit a live,
broadcast-quality,
image of the impact. Thus, the cruise missile becomes a complex
piece of hardware designed to be an eye-witness to its own destruction.
The moment of impact is also the moment at which the camera goes off air.
Who
can survive the shock of being seen in such a fashion? The collapse of
the eye is rendered as a complex, instantaneous inversion of the last image seen:
black fades rapidly into white, and white instantly turns to black. Sight pools in an
informational
gravity well. Cities carry within them the blueprints for their own
ruins.
Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein has announced the construction in Baghdad of
what will be the biggest mosque in the world. Built to his own design, it will stand
in the middle of a huge artificial lake fed by the waters of the Tigris, which, following the pounding which the Iraqi capital received at the hands of the United States
Air Force, has been transformed into a gigantic open sewer.
“We are rebuilding the ruins in record time,” The Mother of Battles Radio
announced during the Desert War, “for after the triumph. There is no God but
God.”
In Waco, Texas, scorched concrete and featureless earth are all that now
remain of Ranch Apocalypse, where the Branch Davidians under the guidance of
their leader, David Koresh, had their latest and greatest Disappointment.
Recent
events have reconstructed this haunted patch of wasteground into a rhetorical
platform from which Middle America now declares itself to be under attack from all
sides, and especially from within.
American Gulf War veteran, Timothy McVeigh, who once dominated the
terrain of the KTO as the gunner in an armoured vehicle, now sits in a federal
prison cell, charged with the bloodiest bombing in US history. No one seems to
think it strange, in the wake of the attack on the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in
Oklahoma City, that this outrage should have coincided with the second anniversary of the ending of the Waco siege.
Such a convergence is not so much political as theological. If either Ronald
Reagan or George Bush had still been in power at the time of Waco, reads the
subtext connecting these iwo events, perhaps David Koresh’s followers would still
be alive today, and he’d be putting the finishing touches to his commentary on the
breaking of the Seventh Seal.
After all, Reagan believed in the Rapture.
Bush yearned for things to be tested by fire. Both presidents were deeply into
the theology of mass-destruction.
Under their hands the Star Wars programme
appeared and disappeared; uncommented
on, unnoticed and unmourned.
Now,
with Bill Clinton at its helm, Middle America finds itself, for better or worse,
approaching the end of the second millennium
with a President of the Union who
doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of the Apocalypse.
But the signs and portents were all there: in 1994, Los Angeles, that great city
of lenses and surveillance systems, had trembled once more along its own fault line.
After the fires, the uprising, the unrest and the urban decay, an earthquake was just
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enough to emphasize the point that the great city of the twentieth century had only
a few years left to go. Then, exactly one year later to the day, it happened again.
This time in Southern Japan.
Welcome
to Earthquake
Island
Some pretty strange dust started to settle in the media after the earth shifted
so tragically under the people of Kobe and Osaka in January 1995. As the extent of
the damage became increasingly clear, and the casualty rate soared into the thousands, the international
news services struggled to make sense of it all, revealing in
the process a fault line of misunderstanding
running from East to West that was as
real as any that might lie beneath the Japanese mainland.
Commentators,
experts and other assorted professionals crowded onto the
airwaves to explain how the Japanese had neither predicted the earthquake correctly
nor prepared for it adequately in advance and that they knew next to nothing about
disaster relief or even how to counsel the survivors. Unfavourable
comparisons were
also made between the Kobe and the Los Angeles earthquakes. The Japanese people,
it was implied, were being so obviously and willfully wrong-headed
about the whole
thing that they didn’t even deserve to have the earthquake in the first place.
The truth is that the broadcast media tend to confuse their own reactions to
an event with the actual event itself Such incidents as the Kobe earthquake have a
long history of occurring on the Japanese mainland.
An ancient piece of mythological
wisdom has the island of Japan resting upon
the back of a gigantic catfish that lies submerged beneath the primordial
mud.
Every so often, about every seventy years on average, the fish twitches its tail, and
that’s when the earth starts shaking. Some kind of major upheaval had been
expected in Japan since the Great Kanto earthquake devastated Tokyo in 1925,
killing 250,000 of its inhabitants.
All the same, there must have been many in the West who looked at their
video collections with feelings of unease. Wholesale urban demolition
has long been
a staple element in anime, and fans of ka& eiga -Japanese
live-action monster
movies - have seen Tokyo reduced to rubble so often that the city must be
permanently
associated in their minds with scenes of destruction. And that is
perhaps where the tragedy of Kobe really lies. Everyone had expected the earthquake to hit Japan much further south; in Tokyo itself.
The Uncertainty
Principle
If Japan rests upon the back of a giant catfish, then the fate of its capital city
belongs with another, equally fabulous, creature. Ever since he first burst onto the
big screen back in 1954, Godzilla has become famous for the lasting impression he
has made on the Tokyo skyl’ me. Returning to the great metropolis over and over
again in well over half of the twenty-one feature films in which he has appeared so
far, Godzilla, the undisputed king of ka# eiga, has left it in ruins every time.
A gigantic mutant dinosaur breathing radioactive fire, he was the unforeseen
byproduct of atomic testing in the Pacific Ocean at a time when such tests were
beginning to cause grave public concern. The year which saw the release of the first
Godzilla movie was also the one in which the crew of the Japanese fishing boat
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“Lucky Dragon No. 5” were showered with fall-out from the H-Bomb detonated
on Bikini Atoll. Oblique references to this incident were subsequently incorporated
into the film. However, as a true run-away child of the nuclear age, Godzilla is also
subject to the Uncertainty Principle. Just as it is impossible to determine a subatomic particle’s exact position, direction and velocity all at the same time, the Big G
does not allow himself to be pinned down that easily. Does he represent some kind
of dark, unacknowledged
obsession which the Japanese have with their own
destruction, or is he just a guy in a rubber monster costume jumping up and down
on a tabletop landscape pretending to shoot radioactive flame from his mouth?
Godzilla has always been a monster who casts two shadows; one in the West
and the other in the East. His origins reveal a strong mixture of both Japanese and
American influences: conceived as a combination
of two successful Hollywood
monsters -Willis
O’Brien’s King Kong and Bay Harryhausen’s Rhedosaurus in
The Beastfiom 2000 Fathoms - he was presented to the Japanese public as Gojira;
a hybrid name which co-joins the Western word “gorilla” with the Japanese “kujira”,
meaning a whale. He was also quite evidently a man in a rubber suit; an aspect of
the kaiju eiga genre which has never gone down particularly well with Western
audiences who tend to confuse notions of spectacle with those of realism.
Atoms
for Peace
O’Brien’s King Kong and Harryhausen’s Rhedosausus contributed
greatly to
the development of a whole battery of photographic
special effects - from stopframe animation, glass shots and live-action mattes though to the sophisticated
digital processes of today - which have established in the West the conventions by
which cinematic illusions are judged to have become reality. Godzilla, however, has
made an entire career out of failing to meet such demands, earning for himself in
the process a reputation for being cheap, amateurish and silly among those moviegoers who prefer bigger budgeted affairs in which the computer-generated
dinosaurs look real and the actors behave as if they were stuck inside rubber suits.
Furthermore,
Godzilla’s Eastern origins ensured his divergence from Western
notions of reality almost from his very inception. His twin shadows emanate from a
common point; that troubled moment after the Second World War where East met
West on the most uneasy of terms, the American Occupation of Japan.
“Ambiguity”
is a term that barely covers the confusions and contradictions
that characterized this period. During the immediate post-war years, the Japanese
were encouraged to come to terms with the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in elegiac, “positive” ways, such as the 1950 documentary film, Hiroshima,
with its respectful “March of Time” voice-over and its American footage of the
bomb exploding. In the same year, however, a book detailing the events of August
6, I945 as experienced by the bomb’s survivors was printed, bound and then
immediately suppressed by the Occupation forces for being too anti-American.
That volume had to wait another ten years, buried in the depths of Hiroshima City
Hall, before it was finally published.
And whatever thinking lay behind American attempts to discourage traditional Japanese art forms such as Kabuki, with its giant puppets, elaborate cos-
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tumes, masks and exaggerated gestures, can only have helped to establish the
equally stylized theatrical traditions that would eventually come to characterize the
Japanese monster movie. Certainly, it is interesting to note in this context that it
was only after the Occupation was over that Kabuki flourished once again and the
first film compilations
showing existing Hiroshima footage were madesfreely
available to the Japanese public.
Perhaps because Hiroshima is simultaneously
a place and an event, it must
always be approached obliquely, As the effects of radiation sickness become increasingly apparent, from one generation to the next, the connection between the two
becomes more and more apparent: Hiroshima is a monument
that exists in both
time and space. What makes this fact all the more terrible is that Ground Zero
must always remain an imaginary terrain. There is not a soul alive today who can
tell us what happened at the centre of the bombed area. “The great mysterious
monster conquered the city in an instant,” Kenzaburo Oe observed in his Hiroshima Notes - and that instant is really nothing more than a single frame of film
passing through a movie projectors gate.
In Godz&‘s
Skin
Meanwhile,
back in 1950s small-town America, where everything seemed to
be going well a n d everyone was under attack, atomic science was having a field day,
“People talk a great deal of nonsense about the effects of nuclear radiation,”
one of
the scientists announces in The Monster That Challenged the Worki. Considering
that
he’s appearing in a movie opposite an army of giant mutant snails hell-bent on
invading California, it’s a pretty safe assumption that he knows what he’s talking
about.
While real scientists were secretly injecting very real plutonium
into the
bodies of the poor, the sick, the needy and the institutionalized,
the American
public indulged itself in a nuclear nightmare of orgiastic proportions. Atomicpowered spaceships crashed into the sides of mountains, and giant ants built their
colonies out of the very sand that covered Ramases the Magnificent’s dream palace.
So far, so familiar. However, things only started to get really scary when the big
cities of America, with their recognizable monuments and landmarks, were approached by these portents of the future.
The unease with which an audience watched a flying saucer glide over the
Washington Mall at the beginning of The Day the Earth Stood Stil in 195 1 turned
to shock in 1956, when the reassuring shapes of the Washington Monument,
together with those to Lincoln and Jefferson, and the dome of the Capitol Building
were smashed to pieces by invading aliens in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. It shouldn’t
come as any surprise to discover that the man responsible for this startling vision
was Ray Harryhausen, whose giant stop-frame mutant octopus tore San Francisco’s
Golden Gate Bridge apart in It Came From Beneath the Sea in 1953 and whose
Rhedosaurus had rampaged through a very real-looking
New York earlier that same
year.
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Willis O’Brien’s King Kong - re-released in 1952 and even more popular
with monster movie fans than he had been back in 1933 also took on New York.
And lost.
Carl Denham, however, only got it partly right. It clearly wasn’t the airplanes
that killed the beast, but it wasn’t beauty either. It was the fall from the top of the
Empire State Building that finally did for the mighty Kong.
Landmarks call kill.
In the 1976 remake, the poor bugger even had to take a dive off the new,
improved and even taller symbol of economic power; the World Trade Centre. How
could anyone have seriously believed, nearly twenty years later, that a truck loaded
with explosive could succeed in toppling what King Kong could not?
Godzilla, who has only ever had to contend with the rather banal splendours
of the Tokyo Tower and the Diet Building, has always managed to inflict more
damage upon Japan’s capital city than it has ever succeeded in causing him in
return. One of the reasons for this is that the Uncertainty Principle places Godzilla
squarely outside the “Nature vs. Technology” debate which has come to dominate
the way in which monster movies are perceived. Possessing a more markedly
individualistic
personality than the anonymous armies of assorted giant fauna that
rampaged across America during the 195Os, Godzilla has always followed his own
instincts. However, unlike King Kong, he is no oversized nature boy, fresh off the
boat and ready to get beaten to the ground at the first instance by the iniquities of
urban civilization.
Existing above and beyond the oppositional
trends of nature and culture,
Godzilla has also become the victim of a common misconception.
His skin,
contrary to popular opinion, is never green - the colour traditionally
associated
with plant life and, by extension, with Nature itself - but a very deep charcoal
grey. His impenetrable hide is the same shade as burned stone and compacted
carbon; hard, dense and unyielding. The same colour as the impact of energy on
matter at Ground Zero.
Perhaps placing Godzilla at the heart of Hiroshima’s or Nagasaki’s ruins raises
more than just questions of taste in the Western viewer’s mind. The truth is,
however, that films belonging to the ,&a;iu eiga genre were, from the very beginning,
made to a very different set of criteria. The majority of them were photographed
in
an anamorphic wide-screen process which, when properly projected, lent the images
a greater sense of scale and depth. To add further atmosphere, the films’ soundtracks
were almost always recorded in stereo; an innovation which dates back to at least
1957. Presented in such a fashion, Godzilla’s destruction ofTokyo - built in
considerable detail at one twenty-fifth
scale and filmed in slow motion to collapse
more effectively - took on a spectacular, almost theatrical, quality. Unfortunately,
by the time these films reached the West, they had been scanned and panned to fit a
smaller format, their soundtracks re-recorded and rearranged, and additional scenes
(usually shot on an entirely different screen ratio) had been inserted. Let’s not even
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mention the dubbing. What was left appeared as a miserable failure to achieve a
level of cinematic realism which the films had never set out to attain in the first
place.
Tokyo Must Be Destroyed
But how real is real? There is a story about security guards in a Tokyo department store stopping two suspected terrorists who had been overheard animatedly
discussing the destruction of the city. The dangerous subversives turned out to be
veteran director Ishiro Honda swapping ideas with special effects expert Eiji
Tsuburaya for a scene in what was to become Gojira, the first Godzilla movie.
Illusions depend a great deal upon not being in full possession of the facts. To
see the kaiju eiga genre as the obsession of a culture repeatedly seeking to rehearse
repressed or unacknowledged
fears of nuclear obliteration
or natural catastrophe is
to explain little and to obscure a great deal more. It is also an attitude based upon a
very selective view of Japan’s filmic output. For example, in the decade that witnessed the rise of Godzilla, films explicitly confronting Japan’s continuing
nuclear
nightmare, such as Kaneto Shindo’s Children of Hiroshima and Lucky Dragon No.5,
were also being released. Ishiro Honda himself had visited Hiroshima in 1946 and
had wanted to convey in Gojira some of the horrors which he experienced there.
Unfortunately,
the film’s references to bomb shelters, Nagasaki and its pleas for
nuclear disarmament were deleted from the English-language
version by its American distributors.
Godzilla, however, had already selected a very different target for himself. It
was a disaster area still waiting to lnappen, and each time he returned to it, he
became more a part of its future than its past.
By 1945, allied air raids had reduced most of Tokyo to smoking embers. Its
predominantly
wooden buildings had burned easily, resulting in the destruction of
three-quarters of a million houses and the deaths of 100,000 of the city’s inhabitants. A further three million were left homeless. Today, as well as being one of the
principal centres of world economic activity, the greater Tokyo area also houses an
astonishing 25% of Japan’s entire population. This vast urban sprawl has come to be
regarded by many as the ultimate megalopolis: the first city of the 21st Century.
The planners and engineers responsible for its safety have also described it as a
“disaster amplification
mechanism”; a term which could just as easily be applied to
Godzilla himself.
There is, however, something both reassuring and unsettling about the Tokyo
which Honda and Tsuburaya had Godzilla smash so repeatedly, It never changed.
No matter how far into the future the films were set, Tokyo always returned looking
the same. In a universe increasing1.y populated by alien invaders, female psychics,
killer androids and giant mecha, Tokyo’s vast centre-less sprawl seemed to expand
into time and space, eternally rising unchanged from its own rubble. The more
Godzilla demolished it, the more it came back, determined to survive.
Godzilla
in Paradise
Godzilla’s career trajectory as an urban destroyer has never been as smooth as
his continuing
relationship with Tokyo might suggest. Quite often he became the
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victim of his own success. The cost of rebuilding an entire city is still high, even
when it only exists in miniature. Furthermore, his audience was not only getting
larger, but appreciably and enthusiastically younger. Consequently he was packed
off, from time to time, to remote tropical islands in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean, where palm trees were cheaper to replace than skyscrapers and he could
participate in such juvenile romps as Toho’s Son of Goakilkz.
This did not mean, however, that the dark forces which he had come to
represent had also been sent on vacation. It is worth remembering
that Japan
produced many disaster films outside of the Godzilla cycle which dealt much more
explicitly with the themes of catastrophe and disaster, most notably Toei Studio’s
The Final War and Toho’s The Last War (both about global nuclear conflict) in the
1960s; Tidul Wave, Last Days ofPlanet Earth, in the 1970s; and Virus in the early
1980s. As these films would inevitably have utilized similar special effects budgets
and technicians as the monster movies, it is not surprising to find that they tended
to be made when there was a slackening off, either of quality or frequency, in the
kai& eiga genre. Similarly, Keji Nakazawa’s comic strip, Barefoot Gen, based upon
his own childhood experiences of the bombing of Hiroshima, first appeared in the
children’s magazine Shukan Shonen/umpu during the early 197Os, at a time when
Godzilla’s audience was predominantly
pre-teen.
To transpose Godzilla from his urban habitat in mainland Japan to the
arcadian paradise of an island in the Pacific, if only for the briefest of interludes, is
to place him firmly within the kind of “Technology vs. Nature” debate which he so
effortlessly transcended whenever he was tearing Tokyo apart. Son of God&z
illustrates this point extremely well, if only because it raises the one question to
which monster movie otaku have never been able to supply an adequate answer:
who or what exactly did Godzilla mate with to produce a son?
At the beginning of the film, Godzilla is seen swimming towards Solgell
Island, attracted by a mysterious radio signal. However, he is not the first interloper
to arrive on this tropical paradise. A group of scientists - all male - have already
established a research centre amid its sultry palms to study the ways in which
climatic conditions can be artificially manipulated and controlled. They, in turn,
have to endure an intruder of their own: a pushy, camera-toting
newshound called
Goro, also male. As the story unfolds, and it becomes increasingly apparent that all
of this tropical Eden’s invaders are masculine, it comes as no surprise to discover
that Solgell Island’s indigenous population are exclusively female. As Godzilla’s son,
Minya, emerges from his egg, he is attended by a coven of giant preying mantises
who quickly forget their duties as midwife when they discover that he is a male and
- true to type - attempt to devour him. Slumbering deep within the islands
depths is another archetypal female predator from pop culture; the Spiga, a monstrous spider. Finally there is Reiko, the jungle girl: one of those natural born
sophisticates who always use their first name when they mean “I”. She is the
orphaned daughter of Professor Matsumiya - another male interloper - and is
the only person in the film to take any real interest in nurturing the young Minya,
pausing every now and again to hurl cantaloupes into his ever-open mouth.
Godzilla’s only contribution
to the little mite’s development, on the other hand, is
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to teach him how to blow radioactive smoke rings. In fact, as a predominantly
masculine science enters into a frenzied discourse with a primordially
feminine
nature, there doesn’t seem to be much else for him to do. This lack of purpose
appears quite puzzling until Goro, in an unguarded moment, makes a reference to
his home in Tokyo. “Tokyo?” asks Reiko, using the kind of basic grammar favoured
by the inhabitants of tropical islands. “What kind of place?”
“Well,” Goro replies, “it’s a man-made jungle”, and it suddenly becomes
evident that Godzilla has no place in this prelapsarian Eden or the thematic
simplicities it engenders.
Like the gangster, the salaryman and the juvenile delinquent,
Godzilla is a
true city-dweller. He needs its ambiguities in order to truly be himself.
Mekatokyo
As Godzilla’s audience became younger during the 60s and 7Os, he quickly
slid from atomic destroyer to comic avenger and science-fiction clown. After so
much time spent mucking about in children’s bedrooms, Godzilla had a lot of
growing up to do. Literally.
When Toho Films brought him back for the 1984 remake of the original
Go+,
they had to almost double his height so that he could compete with the rise
in Tokyo’s skyline over the years. The Japanese capital had expanded upwards and
outwards to an alarming degree, dwarfing its cinematic counterpart.
“That’s quite an urban renewal programme they have there,” an American
army major remarks of Godzilla’s attack on Tokyo, but he could have been speaking
about the city’s actual growth rate. An anarchic process of demolition
and reconstruction, in which houses, shops and tower blocks were continually
being torn
down and rebuilt, had resulted in an anonymous sprawl that seemed to stretch on
forever. This prompted further concerns about its safety. Planners became worried
that too much of the nation’s future had become concentrated into its disasterproofed structures. There were calls for a radical decentralization
of Tokyo’s functions into other parts of the country, but how do you decentralize something which
has no centre?
Fragile and featureless, caught between expansion and catastrophe, Tokyo’s
possible futures came to dominate anime. In BubbLegum Crisis, Mega Tokyo has
been rebuilt from the ruins of the old capital city after it was devastated during “the
second Kanto Earthquake”.
Bigger and more ungovernable than ever, it is menaced
by fearsome cyborgs and corporate powerplays. The series title hints at the steadily
increasing state of instability that occurs the moment before the bubble bursts.
Neo-Tokyo, the setting for Katsuhiro Otomo’s A&a, has been rebuilt after
Tokyo’s nuclear obliteration
into a high-rise labyrinth of rioting citizens, political
unrest, terrorism and full-scale gang warfare. Readers of the manga version will also
know that Tokyo actually has the dubious privilege of being demolished twice
during the course of Otomo’s 1800-page story.
Even with a complete change of name, Tokyo’s ruins are clearly identifiable.
In Project A-KO, the city of Graviton has been rebuilt into an unstable business
community
around the waters of a bay punched out of the Earth’s crust by a giant
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spaceship that plummeted from the sky. Olympus, in Masamune.Shirow’s
Appleseed, is a city state that rose to prominence after a devastating global conflict
and now staggers from one near-apocalyptic
power struggle to the next. Newport in
Dominion, also by Shirow, is in constant danger of being transformed into a
demolition
derby by the Tank Police; the very force sworn to protect it.
Silent Moe&us takes place in a Tokyo which has managed to survive into the
twenty-first century without having to undergo either serious destruction or a
name-change, but has swollen to enormous, unmanageably overcrowded proportions. Seriously polluted, plagued with unbreathable air and acid rain, it has also
become the arena for demonic incursions from another dimension. Wicked City,
Urotsukidoji and Doomed Megalopolis (which features the original Kanto Earthquake) all pursue similar themes of supernatural invasion. The origins of the
Patkzbor series lie in the threat to a vulnerable Tokyo of rising tidal waters caused by
the Earth’s global warming. Then there’s Cyber City, l%yo Babylon, AD Police.. . the
list, like a streetplan ofTokyo, seems to go on forever.
The
Ruins
of Cyberspace
In all these visions of the future, Tokyo is depicted as a major conurbation
entering the 2Ist Century having already run out of time. It is also a city of glowing
colours, rapid edits, break-neck narratives and dizzying perspectives. Whereas in the
kaiju eiga genre, Tokyo was a city of details and effects, of collapse as a theatrical
spectacle, anime has transformed it into a place made out of pure velocity. A
product of the video age, its depth and its structures are now created by the speed of
an electron moving across the flat plane of a television screen. Both versions,
however, depict Tokyo as a featureless urban mass. Landmarks are so rare that their
appearance arouses suspicion, In the 1992 remake of God&h us the Thing, Mothra
cocoons Tokyo’s Diet building in an ironic comment on the political scandals of the
time. Its fictional counterpart, the Genom Tower, broods over Mega Tokyo in
Bubblegum Crisis, and in the manga version ofAppleseed, the huge Tartarus arcology
appears in frame after frame; a series of futuristic Views of Mount Fuji.
Tokyo’s real landmarks are its imaginary ruins, a point well illustrated at the
end of Shinya Tsukamoto’s manga-influenced
live-action movie, Tetsuo 11, where the
salaryman protagonist and his family wander like tourists, sight-seeing among
Tokyo’s devastated towerblocks. The ambiguous feelings which Tsukamoto has
expressed towards the city - enjoying the security of its utilities while yearning also
for the wide-open spaces created by its destruction - have a counterpart in the
thinking of Japan’s more radical designers, such as Toyo Ito, who see Tokyo as a city
whose life does not reside in its structures but in the energies that surge through
them. Its true architecture, they argue, exists in the limitless profusion of temporary
forms thrown up by computer links, information
flows, networked images and
disembodied voices. Computer animation, videogaming
and the technology of data
processing have all conspired to take destruction beyond mere physical limitations.
Tokyo won’t become decentralized: it will dematerialize itself instead.
Paradoxically, serious questions are now being raised about what form such a
demateriahzation
might take. As the standing ruins of the Alfred Murrah Federal
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Building in Oklahoma City are being razed to ground, the American public is being
warned that the extreme right have begun to infiltrate the Internet. In Japan, it has
now been revealed that the Aum !jhrinrikyo cult, accused of the Sarin gas attack
upon a crowded subway train during the morning rush hour in Tokyo,.appropriated
themes and imagery derived from popular manga and mime series in developing
their paranoid visions of the forthcoming
apocalypse.
While otaku use the sprawl of the Internet, a communications
system
originally designed to survive a mrclear attack, to swap esoteric factoids about
Ultraman and Hello Kitty, there is still someone present whose influence is unmistakable.
Having been there at the start of it all, he will not be quickly forgotten.
One of the most immediate responses to the Kobe Earthquake was that the
Nikkei Index fell by over 1,000 points in a single night. This was the result of
nervous speculators fearing that Japan was about to start withdrawing
capital from
its investments overseas to finance the rebuilding programme. If a series of checks
and balances had not previously been introduced into the system -just
after the
crash of 1987 and immediately before the start of Operation Desert Storm - in
order to discourage dangerous flu’ctuations in the market, Japan’s economy would
have probably dropped right through the floor, taking the rest of the world with it.
Godzilla, it seems, is alive and well and rampaging through cyberspace. Consider
yourselves warned.
Stalkingthe UFOMeme
Ricbmd Tbieme
“There
is Thingumbob
shouting!”
the Bellman said. “He is shouting
like mad, only hark! He is waving his hands, he is waggling
his head, He
has certainly
found a &ark!”
Lewis Cu~~oll, The Hunting
“We
ranking
of the Snark
are convinced
that Roswell took place. We’ve had too many high
military
off&Is
tell us that it happened,
that told us that it was
clearly not of this earth.”
Don Schmitt, co-author, “The Truth About the UFO
Cra.4 at Roswell, ” in an inrerview by Ed Mar and
jody Mecanic for Lumpen Magazine
on the Internet
That “interview with a real X-Filer” can be found on one of the hundreds of
web sites - in addition to Usenet groups, gopher holes stuffed with hundreds of
files, and clandestine BBSs where abductees meet to compare “scoop marks” - that
make up the virtual world of flying saucers.
The UFO subculture or - for some - the UFO religion on the Internet is a
huge supermarket of images and words. Everything is for sale - stories and
pictures, membership in a community, entire belief systems. But what are we
buying? The meal? Or the menu?
The Bricks that Build the House
When Don Schmitt uses the word “Roswell,” he is not merely identifying a
small town in New Mexico that put itself on the tourist map with a terrific UFO
story. He uses it to Mm
the whole story - the one that says a UFO crashed in
1947 near the Roswell Army Air Field, after which alien bodies were recovered, eyewitnesses rewarded with new pick-up trucks or threatened with death, and, a cosmic
Watergate - as Stanton Friedman, another Roswell author, calls it - initiated.
Schmitt uses the word “Roswell” the way Christian evangelists use “Jesus,” to mean
everything believed about “Roswell.” Like an evangelist, he counts on his audience
to fill in the details. Every good Roswellite knows them - it’s the story, after all,
that defines them as a community.
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That story is scattered on the Internet like fragments of an exploding
ship. Do the pieces fit together to make a coherent puzzle? Or is something
with this picture?
Stalking
spacewrong
the UFO meme on the Internet
Memes are contagious ideas that replicate like viruses from mind to mind.
The Internet is like a Petri dish in which memes multiply rapidly. Fed by fascination, incubated in the feverish exc:itement of devotees transmitting
stories of cosmic
significance, the UFO meme mutates into new forms, some of them wondrous and
strange.
“The Roswell incident” is but one variation of the UFO meme. On the
Internet, Schmitt’s words are hyperlinked to those of other UFO sleuths and legions
of interested bystanders like myself, as fascinated by the psychodynamics
of the
subculture’as by the “data” exchanged as currency in that marketplace.
Before we examine a few fragments, let’s pause to remember what the
Internet really is.
Copies
of copies -
or copies of originals?
The Internet represents information
through symbols or icons. So does
speech, writing, and printed text, but the symbols on the Net are even further
removed from the events and context to which they point.
The power of speech gave us the ability to lie, then writing hid the liar from
view. That’s why Plato fulminated. at writing - you couldn’t know what was true if
you didn’t have the person right there in front of you, he said, the dialog providing
a necessary check.
The printing press made it worse by distancing reader and writer even more.
Now we put digital images and text on the Net. Pixels can be manipulated.
Without correlation with other data, nlo digital photo or document can be taken at face
value. There’s no way to know if we’re looking at a copy of an original, a copy of a
copy, or a copy that has no original.
But wait. It gets worse.
The World
is a Blank
Screen
Certain phenomena, including UFOs and religious symbols, elicit powerful
projections. We think we’re seeing “out there” what is really inside us. Because
projections are unconscious, we don’t know if we’re looking at iron filings obscuring
a magnet or the magnet itself,
Carl Jung said UFO’ s invite projections because they’re mandalas - archetypal images of our deep Selves. LJnless we separate what he think we see from what
we see, we’re bound to be confused.
Repetition makes any statement seem true. Hundreds of cross-referenced
links on the Web create a matrix of even greater credibility. In print, we document
assertions with references. Footnotes are conspicuous by their absence on the Web.
Information
is self-referential. Syrnbols and images point to themselves like a tendimensional
dog chasing its own tails.
“Roswell” may be the name of the game, but what does the name really say?
,
’
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255
in a name?
Everything.
Names reveal our beliefs about things.
Was there a “Roswell incident?” Or was there a “so-called Roswell incident?”
Are Don Schmitt and his former partner Kevin Randle “the only two
professional investigators in the field” as Schmitt claims in that interview? Or are
they in fact “self-styled professional UFO investigators?” (UFO investigators
accredit themselves, then reinforce their authority by debating one another and
showing up at the same forums. Refuting or attacking another “investigator”
does
him a favor by acknowledging
his importance.)
Are there “eight firsthand witnesses who saw the bodies,” “many high-ranking
military offtcials who said it was not of this earth,” or “550 witnesses stating that
this was not from this earth?” All of those statements are made in the same interview.
Words like “self-styled” and “alleged” do more than avoid law suits. They
make clear that the speaker states or believes something rather than knows it to be
true. Schmitt uses the word “witness” the way Alice in Wonderland
uses words, to
mean exactly what she wants them to mean - instead of letting witness mean.. .
well, witness.
Dan Kagan and Ian Summers have written a masterful investigation of “cattle
mutilation”
(Mute Euiahce, Bantam Books, New York: 1984), detailing how
predator damage became “cattle mutilation”
conducted with “surgical precision,”
i.e. in straight lines, through the distortion of the media, “professional experts” who
kept everyone one step away from the evidence (common in UFO research), and
true believers who suspended their capacity for critical judgment.
“The Roswell incident” also consists of words repeated often enough to turn
them into pseudo-facts which are then used to weave a scenario. When enough
people believe the scenario, they focus on the minutiae of the story - did it crash
on the Plains of San Agustin, as Stanton,Friedman
claims, or north of Roswell as
Schmitt and Randle claim? - instead of the basics, i.e. did anything other than a
balloon crash at all? Science turns quickly into theology.
I
Can a Fact Move at the Speed of Light?
The way sites are connected on the WWW tends to obliterate our historical
sense. Everything on the Web seems to be happening now. Without a point of
reference, all information
seems equal. Lining up texts side-by-side and evaluating
discrepancies feels like hard work.
Surf to the Cambridge Cybercafe, for example, and you’ll find a laudatory
article about Schmitt written by Milwaukee writer Gillian Sender.
Sender says the piece was purloined without her permission. Like much on
the Net, it’s an unauthorized copy of a copy.
Sender did a follow-up piece for Milwaukee Magazine in which she confessed
her subsequent disillusionment
with Schmitt. In interviews he misrepresented his
educational background and occupation. Sender concluded that those misrepresentations undermined
his credibility across the board.
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You won’t learn that on the Web, because the second piece isn’t there. The
Cybercafe web site also has a newsletter written by Schmitt and Randle but no link
to information
about their later split, when Randle denounced Schmitt for deceiving him as well as others.
The Soul of the Web
According to Jung, when the psyche projects its contents onto an archetypal
symbol, there is always secrecy, fascination, and high energy. When a webmaster
finds an article like Sender’s he gets excited, plucks it out of cyberspace, and puts it
on his site. Come across it four or five times, you start to believe it.
Tracking down the truth about the “Roswell incident” is like hunting the
mythical Snark in the Carroll poem. The closer one gets to the “evidence,” the more
its disappears.
There is in fact not one living “‘witness” to the “Roswell incident” in the
public domain, not one credible report that is not filtered through a private
interview or other privileged communication.
There are, though, lots of people making a living from it.
Who
ARE These Guys?
Karl Pflock is another “Ro,.sell investigator.” Stick his name into a search
engine and you’ll find him on the UFOlogist roster at Glenn Campbell’s Area 5 1
web site. The text of an online interview with Pflock and Stanton Friedman is
reproduced there.
What effect does this have?
By appearing with him, Friedman lends credibility to Pflock’s status. Their
disagreement over details (Hock thinks the Roswell debris was the remains of a
Project Mogul ball oon, as the Air Force claims) is less important than the fact of
their debate, which implies that the details are important, the debate worth having.
That ensures lirture bookings for both.
Get the idea? In the virtual world, the appearance of reality becomes reality.
Then you can buy and sell words, icons, symbols as if the menu is the meal.
Pflock is not new to the world of UFOs. Kagan and Summers first encountered him as a man named “Kurt Peters” who appropriated
a story he knew was
fabricated about “cattle mutilatio:ns,” then tried to pass it off as his own and sell it
to a New York publisher. When the authors confronted Pflock “with the Kurt Peters
gambit, he was shaken that we had found him out.”
What might we infer, therefore, about Pflock’s credibility? On the Web,
however, the context created by juxtaposition
with Friedman makes it seem as if he
is a real “professional.”
Follow
the Money
The UFO game needs teams so the game can be played. The “for-team” and
the “against-team”
are essential to each other. The famous “alien autopsy film”
exploited by Ray Santilli illustrates this.
This film allegedly showed the autopsy of an alien retrieved from a crash site.
Many web sites were devoted to this film; Usenet groups hummed with endless
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conversation about the details. One major thread was devoted to finding the
cameraman. (Once again, the key player or detail was absent, the audience addressed by a “spokesperson for the event.“)
A great deal of money was made by debating the film, regardless of which
side one was on. Stanton Friedman was off to Italy for a screening, Schmitt to
England to “examine the evidence,” and so on. Meanwhile reports like that by Dr.
Joseph A. Bauer on CSICOP’s web site that exposed the film’s “overwhelming
lack
of credibility” were ignored. The lack of credibility was obvious from the beginning,
but had it been acknowledged, there would have been no game to play - no FoxTV special, no books or debates, no conferences in Europe.
The Santilli episode is about played out, but other “evidence” is taking its
place. At the moment, an anonymous tipster claims to have a fragment of the
crashed saucer. The story is spreading on the Web, mutating as it grows. Now, fifty
years after the alleged crash, others claim to have fragments too.
The good thing about fragments of crashed saucers is that they are endless.
Even better are the claims made by “professional investigators” that they are
negotiating with shadowy figures who have fragments but are afraid of being killed
if they go public. Those stories are endless too.
To know someone’s motivation, follow their checkbook. Look, for example,
at the heated rivalry in the town of Roswell between museums competing for
tourist dollars with trips to rival crash sites. You can even sign up for the tour on the
Web.
Information?
Misinformation?
Disinformation?
The Santilli film could be dismissed as a non-event, did it not reveal a deeper
dimension of life in the UFO world. What were its effects?
Energy was displaced, the focus of the debate shifted, and the “Roswell
incident” - ironically - reinforced.
When someone says, “These are not the real crown jewels” they imply that
real crown jewels exist. If this is a fake autopsy film, where is the real autopsy film?
That implies a real autopsy which implies real aliens and a real crash.
Or was the film an ingenious piece of disinformation
by the government?
Was it designed to throw investigators off the track? See how we responded to news
of real aliens? Hide some real data among a snowstorm of false data?
Is all this confusion.. . intentional?
It’s X-files time.
Ready for a Headache?
Now we’re closing in on the Snark.
Are government agents using the subculture to manipulate or experiment
with public opinion? To cover up what they know? Are the investigators “useful
idiots,” as they’re known in the spy trade, real spies, or just in it for the buck?
One of my online adventures illustrates the difftculty of getting answers to
these questions.
A woman in Hamilton, Montana, was speaking to Peter Davenport, head of
the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle about a UFO she said was hanging
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around her neighborhood.
She said she could hear strange beeps on the radio when
it was hovering. Then, while they spoke, some beeps sounded.
“There!” she said. “You hear that? What is that?”
Peter played the beeps over the telephone. I recorded them. Then I posted a
message on ah.2600 - a hacker’s Usenet group - asking for help.
I received several offers of assistance. One came from LoD.
LoD! The Legion of Doom! I was delighted. If anybody can get to the
bottom of this, the LoD can. These guys are the best hackers in the business.
I recorded the beeps as a .wav file and emailed them to LoD. They asked a
few questions and said they’d see what they could find.
Meanwhile I received another email. This writer said he had heard similar
tones over telephone lines and shortwave radio in his neighborhood,
which happened to be near a military base.
Then he wrote, “I have some info that would be of great interest. Government documents.. .” He mentioned friends inside the base who told him about
them.
Meanwhile the LoD examined the switching equipment used by the telco
and reported that they were evaluating the data.
A third email directed me to a woman specializing in the “beeps” frequently
associated with UFOs. She sent me a report she had written about their occurrence
and properties.
LoD asked for my telephone number and someone called the following week.
They could afhrm, the caller said, that the signals did not originate within the
telephone system. They could say what the signals were not, but not what they
were. One negative did not imply a positive.
Then the correspondent near the military base sent a striking communication.
“The documentation
and info that I am getting are going to basically confirm
what a member of the team has divulged to me.
“They are here and they are not benign.”
He gave me information
about other things he had learned, then acknowledged that all he said was either worthless hearsay or serious trouble. Therefore, he
concluded, “I am abandoning this account and disappearing back into the ether.”
The
Twilight
Zone
There you have it. Without corroboration
or external evidence to use as a
triangulating
point, that’s as far as the Internet can take us.
Words originate with someone -but
who? Is the name on the email real? Is
the domain name real? Is the account real?
Secrecy. Fascination. High energy,
Maybe it’s a sign of the times that I was pleased to have the help of the LoD.
While I would have dismissed a government or telco statement as maybe true,
maybe not, I trusted LoD.
Digital
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257
They did a solid piece of work. Technically they’re the best, but more than
that, I knew they’d be true to their code. Like me, they’re need-to-know
machines
and they love a good puzzle.
What about the next-door-to-the-military
source? Was he who he said he
was? Were his contacts telling the truth? Are “they” here and are “they” not benign?
Or was he a government agent trying to learn what I knew? Or just a bored kid
who felt like killing a little time?
How do we separate fact from fiction? Jacques VallCe, a respected writer and
researcher, recently authored a work of fiction about UFOs. Is he really writing
fiction so he can disguise the truth, as some say? Or is he just another guy selling a
book? Or a serious investigator who has blurred his own credibility by writing
fiction that’s hard to distinguish from his theories?
Or is he a secret agent working for the government?
The UFO world is a hall of mirrors. The UFO world on the Internet is a
simulation of a hall of mirrors. The truth is out there, all right.. . but how can we
find it?
Plato was right. We need to know who is speaking. We need to stay with the
bottom-line
data that won’t go away.
The Bottom
Line
What does it look like?
One piece looks like this. I know a career Air Force officer, recently retired as
a full colonel. He worked at the Pentagon and the War College., He is a terrific guy
who has all the “right stuff.” He’s the kind of guy you’d willingly follow into battle.
Many did.
A fellow B47 pilot in the sixties told him of an unusual object that flew in
formation with him for a while, then took off an incredible speed he could not
match. The co-pilot independently
verified the incident. Neither wanted to report
it and risk damage to their careers.
When he first told me that account in the 197Os, I remember how he looked.
He usually looked confident, even cocky. That time he looked puzzled, maybe a
little helpless. I knew he was telling me the truth.
I have seen that look many times as credible people told me their account of
an anomalous experience. They don’t want publicity or money. They just want to
know what’s happening on their planet.
Data has accumulated for at least fifty years. Some of it is on the Internet.
Some of it, like email from that retired air force officer, is trustworthy. Much of it
isn’t.
Are we hunting a Snark, only to be bamboozled by a boojum? Or are we
following luminous breadcrumbs through the darkening forest to the Truth that is
Out There? The Net is one place to find answers, but we’ll find them only if our
pursuit of the truth is rigorous, disciplined, and appropriately
skeptical.
This article appearedfirst
in the November
I996 issue OfInternet Underground.
Transmitting Architecture
The Transphysical City
MizrcosNod
Here and there, sick lamplight through window glass taught us
to distrust the deceitful mathematics of our perishing eyes.
i? Z Marinetti,
Futurist
Manifesto,
1909
Analogy is nothing more than the deep love that links
distant, seemingly diverse and hostile things.
E lY Marinetti,
Futurist
Man$&o,
1913
TechnoChronology
May 20-24,
1994. 4CyberCorzf At the Banff Centre For the Arts in Alberta,
Canada, under the auspices,of the Art and Virtual Environments
Project, the last
virtual chamber created for “Dancing With The Virtual Dervish: Worlds in
Progress” affords viewers the world’s first immersive experience of phenomena
involving a fourth spatial dimension.
February 3-4, 1995: The transTerraFirma project is launched. Two Silicon
Graphics OnyxiRealityEngine2
graphics supercomputers,
one at the University of
Texas at Austin and the other at the Electronic Cafe in Santa Monica, connected to
one another via ethernet, give aud.iences the opportunity
to navigate through and
interact within shared virtual architecture. Even though the two sites can communicate via live audio and video ISDN connections, people prefer interacting in the
virtual worlds to simply seeing and speaking to one another directly,
April 3, 1995: “Webspace,”
a three-dimensional
browser for the World-Wide
Web (WWW),
is announced by Silicon Graphics and Template Graphics Software.
Built around the VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) and OpenInventor
graphics formats, designed to work on all the major computer platforms, and
integrated into the functioning
of Netscape, the most widely used WWW browser,
Webspace creates the first widespread opportunity
for the transmission and exchange of virtual environments.
May 20-28, 1995: At the Tidsvag No11 ~2.0 (Timewave Zero) art and
technology exhibition in Gotheborg, Sweden, the transTerraFirma
project contin-
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261
ues. A series of worlds are constructed that can be transmitted over the web and
visited by anyone with internet access and a VRML browser. Address: <http://
www.ar.utexas.edu/centrifuge/ttf.html>.
July 1995: RealityLab, the Laboratory for Immersive Virtual Environments,
is
established within the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. It
is the first facility devoted to the study of virtual space as autonomous architectural
space.
Zero: Transmitting
Architecture
The history of invention alternates between advances of transport and
advances of communication,
that is to say from transmitting
the subject to transmitting the sign and presence of the subject, establishing a symbiosis of vehicles and
media that leads from antiquity all the way to the present. Mode after mode of
expression or perception have yielded to being cast across greater and greater
distances as agents of will and power. Signal, image, letter, sound, moving image,
live sound, live image, sense and action, intersense and interaction, presence,
interpresence, telepresence, all express our awareness of other and elsewhere, and
underscore our will to interact with the sum of what we know to exist simultaneously with us, relativity’s complexities notwithstanding.
In this effort to extend our range and presence to nonlocal realities, architecture has been a bystander, at most housing the equipment that enable us to extend
our presence. The technologies that would allow the distribution
or transmission of
space and place have been unimaginable,
until now. Though we learn about much
of the world from the media, especially cinema and television, what they provide is
only a passive image of place, lacking the inherent freedom of action that characterizes reality, and imposing a single narrative thread upon what is normally an open
field of spatial opportunity.
However, now that the cinematic image has become
habitable and interactive, that boundary has been crossed irrevocably. Not only
have we created the conditions for virtual community within a nonlocal electronic
public realm, but we are now able to exercise the most radical gesture: distributing
space and place, transmitting
architecture.
The transmission of architecture and public space alters all the familiar issues
of architecture and urbanism. All at once, theory, practice, and education are
confronted with questions that have no precedent of consideration within the
discipline, necessitating that we turn elsewhere for guidance. Learning from
software supersedes learning from Las Vegas, the Bauhaus, or Vitruvius: the discipline of replacing all constants with variables, necessary for good software engineering, leads directly to the idea of liquid architecture. Liquid architecture, in turn,
leads to the re-problematization
of time as an active element of architecture at the
scale of the cognitive and musical, not just the historic, political, or economic event.
The language and metaphors of networked, distributed computing apply even
greater torque to the straining conventional definitions of architecture: not only is
real time now an active concern of the architect, but the logistics of sustainable,
transmissible illusion become as real as the most physical material constraints. Form
follows fiction, but an economy of bits replaces the economy of sticks and stones.
262
Digital
9 connector:
To be
techological
understanding
and methods
straints, and
l/4: Implicit
Delirium
conditions:
time, space, sampling,
transmission
effective within these new conditions, the poetic, philosophic,
and
strategies we employ to generate architecture must reflect our current
of physics and cosmology, must utilize our most current concepts
of knowing the world, and confront fully the implications,
conopportunities
that arise from conceiving of a transmissible architecture.
Time
Gilles Deleuze has commented that in early cinema the treatment of time was
bodily-kinaesthetic,
embodying what he calls the “movement-image,”
while what
characterizes cinema now is the “time-image.”
The “movement-image”
uses time as
it is readily perceived in expected sensory-motor action or plot. It is linear time,
proper sequence, straightforward
causality. The “time-image,”
on the other hand,
relies on mechanisms of association, memory, imagination,
illusion, hallucination.
An object out of place, out of time, or out of plot, rationally incongruous,
colors a
scene with its probable histories or possible futures. Building on Bergson, Deleuze
sees in each object, in each frame of a film, a rhizome in time, allowing haecceities
to communicate
“motion withoult action.”
An object is thus enveloped by an aura of its own trajectory through time
that is immensely different from the sequence of images that would describe its
motion through space. The “movement-image”
records positions in space while the
“time-image”
records states in time. The cinema of the time-image adds to this the
combination
of disparate objects, each with its own, implied aura, and constructs a
language of nuances in place of the language of actions. Actions themselves can be
lifted from the simplicity of the movement-image
and placed within the timeimage.
Time permeates every architectural gesture, but in most cases, architecture’s
concern with time is passive. Even where the idea of the time-image is employed in
the evocative arrangement of elements intended to speak through implication,
the
elements and the arrangement are static, responding only to the slow accumulation
of patina and accident. Until now, architecture, even when speaking in the language
of the time-image, has spoken in an inanimate way, using inanimate elements. The
possibility of an animate, or at lealst animated, architecture, containing varying
arrangements of animate or animated elements, has yet to be explored. What
examples do exist are either vehicular, aircraft carriers and skyhooks, nomadic, like
the ornate tents of Bedouin princes, or greatly extended in time or space: so far, the
life of architecture has only manifested itself across continents and centuries.
Once we cast architecture into cyberspace, these concerns take on both
theoretical and practical urgency, The architect must now take into active interest
not only the motion of the user through the environment,
but also account for the
fact that the environment
itself, unencumbered
by gravity and other common
constraints, may itself change position, attitude, or attribute. This new choreographic consideration
is already a profound extension of responsibilities
and
opportunities,
but it still corresponds only to “movement-image.”
Far more interesting and difficult is the next step, in which the environment
is understood not only
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263
to move, but also to breathe and transform, to be cast into the wind not like a stone
but like a bird. What this requires is the design of mechanisms and algorithms of
animation and interactivity for every act of architecture. Mathematically,
this means
that time must now be added to the long list of parameters of which architecture is
a function.
214: Implicit
Space
When space existed as a separate category, architecture was the art of space;
when time existed as a separate category, music was the art of time. The realization
of the deep relation between space and time as spacetime, and the corresponding
parallel relation between mass and energy, challenges the idea that architecture and
music are separate, and prompts us to conceive of a new art of spacetime:
archiMusic. But while we can surely imagine such an artform, we have had no way
to actually construct and inhabit the spatiotemporal
edifices of that imagination.
While our science examines microscopic and macroscopic regions of curved, higher
dimensional spacetime, we build within the confines of the small lots of what our
limited sensorium can comprehend directly. Even though we depend on devices
that rely on phenomena at these other scales, our architecture does nothing to help
us form an intuition of the larger world we know through our theories and instruments.
Until relatively recent times, architecture kept pace with knowledge. By the
middle of the 18th century, however, the historical congruence between ways of
knowing the world and ways of conceiving and executing architecture was disrupted by repeated, and eventually successful, challenges to Euclidean geometry. Up
to that point architecture could still embrace western spatial conceptions: even the
heavens were Euclidean, it seemed. The efforts of Lobachevsky and Riemann, the
descriptions of electromagnetic
fields by Maxwell, and the world view that was
slowly assembled via relativity, quantum mechanics, and that led to today’s theories,
of hyperspace and stochastic universes, created a condition that architecture,
burdened by its materiality, could no longer follow. While a handful of exceptional
architects grappled with the new problems, for the most part, the modernism that
was widely embraced was the most conservative available. Architecture,
for the most
part, ceased to embody the leading edge of our world-view, and turned to narrower
and narrower problems, until it became indistinguishable
from mere utilitarian
building.
The spatial imagination
of mathematicians and physicists has been far bolder
than that of architects. Gauss’s curvature, Lobachevksy’s hyperbolic or “imaginary
geometry,” Riemann’s elliptic geometry, the ladder from scalar to vector to tensor to
spinor to twistor, are yet undigested conceptions of space that must be considered
by a new algorithmic
and computational
critical discourse and poetics. While the
scale at which these conceptions apply is outside the range of everyday experience as
we knew it, that range has itself changed. As Virilio has noted, our horizon has
shifted from the edge of what is visible to our naked eyes to that which is visible
electronically at the speed of light, that is to say, at the scales of non-Euclidean
geometries. Actually, everything we see, we see at the speed of light: what we have
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overcome are atmospheric and perspectival noise, the constraint of seeing in a
straight line, and constraint of seeing from just one point or in just one direction.
Optico-digital
orthographies:
lossless clarity, curved omniscience, panoptical
omnipresence.
The architecture of cyberspace offers the opportunity
to mend the rupture
between how we know the world and how we conceive and execute architecture. It
allows a far greater latitude of experimentation
than any previous architectonic
opportunity.
It is once again possible to seek to know what is known and to
conceive a corresponding
architecture, without always falling back upon the sacred
geometries of ages past. This engagement only makes architecture more relevant to
the world, more in keeping with what is sensed as a new condition. In fact, architecture’s role in articulating spatially the outlook of an age is strongly reasserted.
314: sampling
We cannot know the real in its entirety. As much shields as bridges, our
senses isolate us from the outside world, even as the cognitive mechanisms that
translate raw input into meaningful pattern isolate us from within. In either case,
what we do know is known through sampling: continuous reality, if indeed it is
continuous,
is segmented and reconstituted to fit our understanding.
Sampling implies the existence of a field to be sampled, a sampling rate or
frequency, and a sampling resolution or sensitivity. From subatomic particles to
scanning tunneling microscopes to compact disks to video, film, meteorological
and
cosmological information,
what we know empirically we know through this very
particular form of observation. What we know synthetically or by simulation does
not escape this either: whether we gather or produce data, we do so at increments
and intervals that reduce the infinite, or merely vast, to the manageable. Our own
senses operate by sampling: the finite grids of rods and cones that form our retinas
feed a finite number of nerve endings at finite intervals: whatever continuity we
perceive in the world is an illusion we construct.
Understanding
the world as field is very different from understanding
the
world as dialectic of solid and void. The world of objects and emptinesses is
enumerable, a world of local binary decisions: is/is-not. In a world of fields, the
distinction between what is and what is not is one of degree. There can be as many
sampling points where something is not as there are where something is. Sampling
involves an intermediate sense of reality, something between real and integer
numbers, a fractal notion of qualified truth, truth-to-a-point.
An object’s boundary
is simply the reconstructed contour of an arbitrarily chosen value. Having captured
a three dimensional array of pressure points around a tornado, we can reconstruct
the pressure contour of the center of the storm just as surely as we can the leading
edge. At one density setting the data from a magnetic resonance scan give the shape
of one’s skull, at another the shape of one’s brain, paradoxically replacing the
discontinuity
of sampling with a new continuity across names and categories.
The data upon which these tools are applied can come from any of several
sources: direct sensing of the environment,
computation
of functions that occupy
space, fiction and fancy, it does not matter which. In McLuhan’s sense, the advent
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of the tool already changes our reality by shifting the balance of all our practices
and outlooks. In order to contend with the enormous amount of information
provided by arrays of instruments directed at all aspects of the world, scientists have
developed a panoply of tools for scientific visualization. The dominant metaphor
behind the operation of these tools is that of the field or lattice. Volume visualization, isosurface construction, advection, and numerous other techniques exist that
allow us to peer into a block of numbers and extract the shape of an answer to a ’
question.
Architectural
heuretics and poetics, even when employing the computer’s
boundary representations and solid modeling, still emphasize a Euclidean understanding of form and space, an ideology of presence and absence. Descriptively,
analytically, synthetically, in every way, the rigidity of the canonical, orthographic
descriptions of architecture fail to capture what is salient to space as we currently
conceive it. Plan, section, elevation, perspective, axonometric, traces of pigment
held by the tooth of vellum, ruler and compass, were perhaps appropriate to the
cycles and epicycles of a Ptolemaic, Copernican, and Galilean universe, or even the .
ellipses of a Keplerian universe, but are completely impotent in arresting the
trajectories of subatomic particles, or the shapes of the gravity waves of colliding
black holes. Once this is observed, it can be readily seen that the plan is dead
because its worldview is obsolete.
An alternative architectural poetics would look past the static depiction of
objects and surfaces to the description of latent information
fields. The air we move
through is permeated by intersecting emanations of information
from every object:
electromagnetic
flux, intensities of light, pressure, and body heat form complex
dancing geometries around us at every instant. We already inhabit an invisible
world of shapes, an architecture of latent information
that is modulated by our
/
every breath and transmission. The shapes are definite, and with the right tools of
sampling and visualization, can be seen, captured, and, if so desired, manufactured.
It is imperative that architects embrace these tools critically and creatively, and set
aside the tools that Alberti used as beautiful, but finally nostalgic, vestiges of
another era.
414: Transmission
The unprecedented
potential to cast space into the electronic net surrounding
the planet is not without restrictions of its own. The astonishing capacity of optical
fiber to carry information
is just being grasped. In the interim, between astonishment and proficiency, we must contend with the present limits of bandwidth.
While everything is growing exponentially, it seems that the speed of computers
and the number of users of the internet are expanding at a more rapid rate than the
availability of the raw carrying capacity required to create shared virtual environments. We will soon have very many people with very fast computers vying for
limited bandwidth.
It is unlikely, and, in any case, against the fundamental insights
of distributed computing, to have a central computer manufacture one reality for
many participants. The paradigm that is emerging is quite the opposite: each
participant receives a compressed, concise description of the world and information
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about the state and actions of all the other participants. Each participant’s local
machine then synthesizes a version of the shared reality that is similar to, but not
necessarily identical with, all the others, depending on local factors and preferences.
In a Leibnizian way, each location functions as a monad. Each location is independent of the others, and yet, by the :fact of their relative agreement, a larger reality is
constructed.
Obviously, what is required here is a transmissible form of reality in condensed form rather than in fixed description. Simple compression does not sufhce,
since it imposes the same limit on resolution for all participants, regardless of their
communicational
and computational
resources. In the long run, what must be
transmitted is not the object itself but its cypher, the.genetic code for the regeneration of the object at each new site, according to each site’s available resources.
Cyberspace as a whole, and networked virtual environments
in particular,
allow us to not only theorize about potential architectures informed by the best of
current thought, but to actually clonstruct such spaces for human inhabitation
in a
completely new kind of public realm. This does not imply a lack of constraint, but
rather a substitution of one kind rigor for another. When bricks become pixels, the
tectonics of architecture become informational.
City planning becomes data
structure design, construction costs become computational
costs, accessibility
becomes transmissibility,
proximity is measured in numbers of required,links
and
available bandwidth.
Everything changes, but architecture remains.
Genetic
Poetics
Slowly, from the considerations above, we can articulate some expectations
about what a cyberspace architecture might involve. It would be an architecture
designed as much in time as in space, changing interactively as a function of
duration, use, and external influence; it would be described in a compact, coded
notation, allowing efficient transmission; it would be amenable to different renditions under different fundamental geometries; and it would be designed with the
most advanced concepts, tools, and processes available. Emphatically
nonlinear and
nonlocal, its preferred modes of narration would inherently involve distributedness,
multiplicity,
emergence, and open-endedness.
Just as chaos and complexity have switched polarities from negative to
positive value, so‘too are all the expressions of disjunction and discontinuity
being
revisited as forms of a higher order. Unlike the disjunction
of collage that has
characterized much of this century, the new disjunction is one of morphing. Where
collage merely superposes materials from different contexts, morphing operates
through them, blending them. True to the technologies of their respective times,
collage is mechanical whereas morphing is alchemical. Sphinx and werewolf,
gargoyle and griffin are the mascots of this time. The character of morphing is
genetic, not surgical, more like genetic cross-breeding than transplanting.
Where
collage emphasized differences by recontextualizing
the familiar, the morphing
operation blends the unfamiliar in ways that illuminate unsuspected similarities and
becomings.
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267
Narrative structures are similarly affected. Cinematically,
the cut yields to the
crossfade and the crossfade yields to the morphed blend, until what would be
consequent scenes merge into a modulated, varying composite of simultaneous
existences. The elements of meaning become atmospheric and temperamental,
and
narrative sequence proceeds from ellipsis to ellipsis, in a stochastic perpetual motion
machine.
Though the question of architectonic merit admits no facile answer, it must
still be asked. Just as simple engines exchange displacement for force, so too do the
tools of cyberspace exchange computational
cycles for the production
of usable
information.
It is fair to inquire not only how much power an engine can produce,
but to what purpose that power is directed. Of all the cpu-cycles expended in the
design and construction
of a work of architecture, how many are applied to
improving its architectonic quality? Are they applied toward goals that increase
architectonic merit, or are they applied to peripheral issues, such as the more rapid
production
of mediocrity?
One of the fundamental scientific insights of this century has been the
realization that simulation can function as a kind of reverse empiricism, the
empiricism of the possible. Learning from the disciplines that attend to emergence
and morphogenesis, architects must create generative models for possible
architectures. Architects aspiring to place their constructs within the nonspace of
cyberspace will have to learn to think in terms of genetic engines of artificial life.
Some of the products of these engines will only be tenable in cyberspace, but many
others may prove to be valid contributions
to the physical world.
One: ttansTerraFirma:
Tidsvag
Nell ~2.0
transTerraFirma
is the ongoing effort to assert the vitality of architecture after
territory. It is also an investigation of the means necessary for architectural conception and production in cyberspace. For the Tidsvag No11 exhibition in Sweden, this
exploration has taken the form of a series of city-worlds constructed for the prerelease version of the Webspace three-dimensional
web browser. These worlds are
now available on the net. In various guises, these “worlds in progress” each explore a
different facet of virtuality.
Words are portals. Woven through the worlds are several webs of non-linear
narrative. Words suspended in space, at different scales and orientations, act as
portals to other worlds. One set of words consists of the names of present or
historical cities that have been the sites of disaster and destruction: Kobe, Kikwit,
Oklahoma City, Waco, Beirut, Sarajevo, Mostar, Johannesburg, Soweto,
Carthage.. . Another set consists of reminders of what humanity would rather
escape: plague, pain, torture, virus, carnage, friction.. .
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A third uses only sentence fragments,
such’as:
preceded
and followed
by ellipses,
.*. this body . . .
. . . the necessity of voids . . . . ..&er
territory.. . . . .you inhabit her fearscapes.. . . . .fragments of stories.. .
. . .he asked about you., .
. . .homeworld.. .
. . .laughter,
pain...
. . *upgrade my love.. . . . . .a matrix of questions.. .
. . *broken glass.. .
. ..no room...
. . .the necessity of voids.. .
. . .you occupy my visions., , . . .collapsing.. . . . .centrifuge., ,
. ..komMERZ...
. . .spectade.. .
This third system always leads to a distribution
node, a world unlike the rest.
The distributor world is a fully spatialized poem consisting almost entirely of text,
arrayed in three dimensional space. Every sentence fragment in this space is a link
back into the city-worlds. By creating a field of text fragments that the visitor can
navigate through, a new form of poem is invented: a spatial poem, characterized by
shifting relationships between the foreground and background words, between the
words that catch the light and the ones that disappear in dark fog. As the visitor
travels through this poem an infinite number of poems shift smoothly past one
another, each phrase an entry to another world. The slow rotation of the text
destabilizes the viewer, creating the necessity to either move to keep the words in
any particular configuration,
or yield to the change and reread the kaleidoscopic
wordplay.
Locked within the deepest recesses of each city-world are nodes of “friction,”
places where the visitor is confro.nted with screens displaying images that have been
gathered on the net, but that recollect reality outside cyberspace. These images are
often related to the names of the cities, but in ways that are not directly apparent.
Bather, the construction of meaning remains the responsibility
of the visitor, who
must integrate the overall sense of place of each world with the sequences of names
of places, keywords, and sentence fragments encountered.
The design of the shapes one encounters in these worlds is based on an
analogy to sound synthesis, extended to include three dimensional form. Timbre,
the character of a sound, is not given by the fundamental frequency of a sound, but
by the structure, proportion,
and onset pattern of the overtones, or multiples, of
that frequency. If we visualize the fundamental frequency as a wave, the character of
the sound is given by the perturbations
caused by the addition or subtraction of
subordinate waves of higher frequency but lesser amplitude. Even though we know
that sound propagates spherically, we normally think of it as an undulating
line,
representing air pressure, moving forward in time. We can just as well represent it as
an undulating
surface, like the surface of a liquid, or as a solid block of pressure or
density values. Let use assume that a simple shape, a cube or a sphere, perhaps,
corresponds to a simple sine wave. We know that by adding perturbations
to the
sine wave, we can produce a richer sound: the same is true for our simple shape.
The idea of a fundamental
function with perturbations
carries well into other
dimensions. Assuming that the fundamental figure of architecture is the domain,
represented in two dimensions by a boundary contour of an arbitrarily chosen
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269
value, and in three by a boundary isosurface, we can search for functions that
produce simple figures, and that can readily be modulated by successive
perturbations
at higher frequencies. Applying the perturbations
conditionally
ensures a high degree of control. Such a conception of architectural space has the
advantage of being extremely compact: a single mathematical expression can be
expanded to become a fully formed chamber, at whatever resolution the available
resources permit. Adding a temporal dimension is as direct as adding another
parameter to the expression, and the expression itself articulates the genetic structure of the chamber, making evident the loci of intervention
for the generative or
genetic algorithm that determines the growth of the architectural artifact over many
generations. And, of course, it is eminently transmissible. While most current three
dimensional
browsers do not yet support the transmission of executable applications, applets, along with data, exceptions do exist, and that functionality
will soon
be standard. It will not be long before form follows the functions of fiction.
One Zero: The Transphysical
I
I
City
Discussions of the relationship of the actual to the virtual tend to polarize
even more rapidly than discussions of morality, politics, or gender. Remnant of our
predator/prey
days, an exclusionary either/or mentality makes more detailed
considerations difftcult. In considering the urban implications of a transmissible
architecture, we will have to set aside binary oppositions and establish continua
between extremes that may well wrap around to meet at their most distant ends.
The transphysical city will be suffused with intelligence. Sensors and effecters
will be ubiquitous and will be linked everywhere with information
utilities as
common as running water. How can we begin to envision such a city?
/
The problem of the design of “intelligent
environments”
can be instructive.
Each term, and their relationships, can be replaced by “tuples.” “Intelligence”
can
be replaced by Howard Gardner’s seven types of intelligence: <visual, verbal,
mathematical, bodily, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal>.
“Environments”
can
be seen to be of at least three types: <actual, virtual, and hybrid>. The loci of
application of intelligence to environments can also be listed: <in, on, of, by.. .>. If
we map these tuples onto a coordinate system, we create a space of possibility for
what intelligent environments might mean, what projects might be undertaken and
what directions explored. What is the bodily intelligence of a virtual environment?
How is intrapersonal intelligence exhibited by a hybrid environment? How can
technologically
augmented intrapersonal “intelligence”
enhance an actual environment? Once we have understood some of the features of this space, we can add
dimensions. What is the range of urbanism?
There is no question that urbanism as we know it will be altered, that our
cities will become our interfaces to the net, that we will really be able to “reach out
and touch someone” across the planet and as far as our transmissions.will
allow. As
important as the understanding
of those changes will be, we must not forget to see
the larger change: a new, nonlocal urbanism is in the making. This new urbanism,
transurbanism,
freed from a fixed geometry, will have to draw upon set theory and
the physics of a quantum universe. As distant as this may appear from the city as we
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know it, the transphysical city will not be the postphysical city. As the prefix trumimplies, it will be at once a transmutation
and a transgression of the known, but it
will also stand alongside and be interwoven into that very matrix.
Futurismo
8t Futurismi
In the decade that has passed since the Futurism0 & Futurismi exhibition in
: the Pallazo Grassi in Venice, the relevance of Futurism to our experience with
technology has become increasingly clear. It is plainly evident that the conditions
we have created will bring about tar deeper changes than the ones that fueled early
modernism. Still, the parallels are strong, and it is worth considering them briefly,
Of the various ways in which the futurists saw simultaneity and dynamism,
Umberto Boccioni’s was perhaps the most prescient and applicable to the conditions we are facing. Critical of Balla’s literal depiction of forms in motion, Boccioni
sought to capture a sense of time that was implicit in being. Like Bergson’s notion
of “duration” as the principle animating the passage through time rather than the
particular form at a given instant, Boccioni’s work observed the lifelessness of a
form arrested from motion.in a single instant, and created forms that were condensed records of their own becalming, past and future both being contained in the
vector of the present. It is perhaps not too surprising that Boccioni’s sense of time
and Deleuze’s time-image would both draw upon, and thus be connected by,
Bergson. What is surprising is that Deleuze and Boccioni, especially the latter’s
Unique Form of Continuity in Space of 19 13 and related works both anticipate and
can be expressed by the tools and concepts of scientific visualization, especially
isosurfaces.
Our surprise is only the result of our forgetting; in his 1913 Munzjkto,
Marinetti
is explicit: “ . . .we should express the infinite smallness that surrounds us,
the imperceptible,
the invisible, the agitation of atoms, the Brownian movements,
all the exciting hypotheses and all the domains explored by the high-powered
microscope. To explain: I want to introduce the infinite molecular life into poetry
not as a scientific document but as an intuitive element. It should mix, in the work
of art, with the infinitely great spectacles and dramas, because this fusion constitutes the integral synthesis of life.”
“Here and there, sick lamplight through window glass taught us to distrust
the deceitful mathematics of our perishing eye.” The wings and propellers of the
Futurists were severed by the rise of Fascism. Marinetti’s words cut both ways.
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271
Works Cited
Bergson, H. Creative Euolution. New York: H. Holt and Company, 1911.
Bergson, H. Matter and memory. New York: Zone Books, 1988.
Deleuze, G. Cinemal.
The Movement
Image. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press
1986.
Deleuze, G. Cinema2: The Time Image. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press
1989.
Hallyn, E The Poetic Structure of the Work& Copernicus and Kepler. New York: Zone Books,
1993.
Huhen, I? (Ed.). Fukismo
BFuturismi.
New York: Abbeville Press, 1986.
Jammer, M. Concepts of Space: The History and Theories of Space in Physics, 3rd Enlarged
Edition. New York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1993.
Kaku, M. Hyperspace: A Scient$c Odyssey Through Paralkl Universes, lime Warps, and the
10th Dimension.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Kauffman, S.k The Origins of Order: Self-Organiurtion
and Selection In Evolution.
New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993.
Perloff, M. The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde,
Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Wolff, R.S. and Yaeger, L. Visualization
ofNatural
Phenomena.
New York: Springer-Vedag,
1993.
MediaArchaeology
Siegfried Zelinski
We’re travelling from the ‘Body in Ruins’ symposium at V2, a Dutch
artist-run, collective, to a midnight debate about net politics with
European surplus class theorists in a warehouse squat on the industrial
outskirts of Frankfurt. Our ttavelling companion from Amsterdam to
Cologne is Siegfried Zielinski. We meet in an old railroad car that looks
like it hasn’t been refurbished since the 1930s: lace curtains, red velvet
seats, mahogany trim. A perfect site for the delirious tale that Zielinski
invokes of Europe’s media past: a strange but haunting vector of secret
texts, books within books, ancient curses, digital dreams, and medieval
cyber-art. A real “prolegomena to an-other history of technological
visioning.” Zielinski’s essay,“Media Archeology,” is an eloquent plea for
the recovery of artistic subjectivity as a way of tempering the sometimes
operational sterility of today’s multi-media fest.
Arthur
and Marilouse
Kroker
1. This year, Cologne’s Academy of Media Arts hosted an event in which
artists, musicians, filmmakers, philosophers, engineers, psychoanalysts, and writers
came together for five days and nights to talk about and around Antonin Artaud. It
was not our intention to hold obsequies for a dead poet nor to celebrate a legend.
Involved as we are, day in day out, both practically and theoretically with digital
artefacts and systems, a few months ago we decided to take this disturbing and
troublesome phenomenon
Artaud and keep him in the Academy for a period of
time as an imaginary fixed point around and on which to debate the following
question: Is (artistic) subjectivity an antiquated notion at the end of the 20th
century and something we must bid farewell to, or is it something that just requires
new conceptions? Naturally we failed in our endeavour, that was inevitable. We did
not answer the question. But we did get a,little closer - just a few beats of a
butterfly’s wing - to renouncing some of the dualisms that have become both dear
and familiar to us, like:
l
l
l
l
l
Calculation and Expenditure
Simulation and Excess
Moderation
and Extravagance
Universalization
and Heterogeneity
Code and Sensation
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273
I argued vehemently against declaring artistic subjectivity dead because I have
the impression that were we to do so, we would encircle this empty space left by
theory and philosophy in an even more hectic and panicked fashion, with even
more words and images and I also think that we from the field..of social praxis
represented by media art must finally start to confront the production
of mediocrity
and nice design, particularly and because we are responsible for teaching and
training young artists.
Yet in which direction are we to formulate this concept of artistic subjectivity
(in the indissoluble linkage of an aesthetic and an ethical orientation),
uis-a-vis the
gigantic cleansing and reducing machinery of digitization? And beyond the
dualisms and antagonisms mentioned before?
There is a gang’ of artists, theoreticians, and artist-theoreticians
who have a
very strong affinity (moreover, one that links them to a figure such as Artaud): they
burn and burn up in the endeavour to push out as far as possible the limits of what
language and machines, as the primary instances of structure and order for the last
few centuries, are able to express and in doing so to actually reveal these limits.
Without doubt it is the most difficult path to tread in and with the apparatus. Otto
Rossler, as physicist and applied chaos theoretician, belongs in my opinion to this
gang, with his attempt to bring together participants and observers in a physics of
heterology that also recognizes ethical responsibility;
Peter Weibel is another, for no
one has been more resolute in challenging techno-aesthetics, from its potential
strength to its signs of fatigue; or there is Oswald Wiener, whose poetic texts on the
phenomenology
of artificial intelligence have helped me enormously to understand
that the sensational richness of all that is non-machine
processable is the greater the
more intensively and uncompromisingly
the machine world is thought of as world
machine.
Something is articulated in strategies and ways of life such as these that, for
me, achieves its clearest expression in the Eactatur Logico-Phihophictu
by Ludwig
Wittgenstein,
that reckless tightrope walker between uncompromisingly
precise
thinking and life, who adhered to the premise that philosophy is not something to
be sat out on a professorial chair, but should be a continuous action of clarification
in its very own medium, language. “Philosophy is not a doctrine it is an activity/
Tatigkeit.. . ,The results of philosophy are not ‘philosophical
sentences’ but the
clarification of sentences. Philosophy should make thought that is otherwise cloudy
and indistinct, clear, and should sharply differentiate it.” (4.112, p. 41)’
The notion of the subject that informs these deliberations has the power to
break free of the shackles of ontological ascriptions. Interface/the boundary,
expressed through main sentences of Wrttgenstein’s Eactatw:
“The world and life are one.” (5.621, 90)
“The
thinking, imagining subject does not exist.” (5.631, 90)
“The subject
(5.632,90)
“That
stand
does not belong to the world, it is a border of the world.”
the world
for the limits
is mine, this is shown
of my world.”
in that the limits
of language
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Ethically justifiable aesthetic activity in the net of the technical and the
imaginary should, according to this, clarify the fragments of expression contained in
it and their relationships to each another. I would term this activity subjective if it
were to succeed in rendering the difference to life/the world to be experienced by
formulating
the boundaries of the net. In principle this is only possible if we
exhaust its possibilities. “ . . . to go in every direction to the end of the possibilities of
the world”3 - this thought comes from the theoretical work by Georges Bataille on
the aesthetic avant-garde and it is still well worth putting it into practice.
This is not a new idea and it did not first occur to someone in the 20th
century. It appears to me to be a basic idea for understanding
what we might call
the avant-garde of technical visioning in history - in awareness of the controversy
surrounding
this term.
I shall now launch a few probes into the strata of stories that we can conceive
of as the history of the media in order to pick up signals from the butterfly effect, in
a few localities at least, regarding both: the hardware and the sofiware of the audiovisual. I name this approach media archaeology, which in a pragmatic perspective
means to dig out secret paths in history, which might help us to find our way into
the fiture. Media archaeology is my form of activity/Tatigkeit.
2. One of the most exceptional stories in Western Judeo-Christian
culture
that imagines an intensive temporal process is the dream of Jacob’s ladder: the risky
and hazardous ascent to the light, the ineffable, as a regular, metrical pattern of _
progress up the rungs of a ladder or solid steps. In some sense or degree it is the
reverse side of Freud’s staircase dream, which in the interpretation
of the psychoanalyst, stands for the strenuous, rhythmic ascent of coitus and its release, ejaculation.
There are countless visual representations of Jacob’s dream, illustrations, paintings,
icons. Some portray the ascent as a wondrous, gentle movement upwards in the
company of pretty angels (in this century the musical film still continues to evoke
this), some as a horror scenario of the death struggle, that takes place between the
hell on earth and the proffered hand of God Almighty. In these media treatments of
the theme, the work that is most often adapted is the 7th century heavenly ladder
of Johannes Klimakos, abbott of the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai.
Vertigo: simple, diagonal ladders, spirals of winding rungs and stair formations,
double ladders and double helixes, mainly occupied by monks of whom the odd
one or other plummets vertically downwards into misery, does not make it to the
top because he cannot completely resist the temptations of hell.
From a perspective of the time image, a highlight among these adaptations is
a Greek manuscript dating from,ca. 1345.4 The exposition of this particular episode
starts with a long shot that gives an overview, followed by a reminiscence of the
author, Johannes Klimakos, with the intersecting vertical and horizontal lines above
his head. Then we see the scene, the monastery in which the Book of Books was
written, first from above, then a zoom to a picture of the abbott at work. Now the
real plot begins, portrayed in iconographic
miniatures: the ascent, step by step. The
movement of ascending is expressed visually, image for image, only by takes of the
ladder, one rung at a time. External movement is minimal and only becomes
dynamic through the succession of images. Between these, other dramatic scenes are
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275
interposed that are supposed to characterize the momentary whereabouts of the
adept, as, for example, at the beginning of the dream scene, encounters with angels,
with virtues or with vices. In this manner, 30 steps are mounted. On the top step,
where a monk is depicted kneeling humbly before Christ, the ladder has disappeared completely. The story ends with two grandiose credits: Johannes Klimakos
and his homily Johannes von Raithn; the final frame shows the star once again in a
close medium shot.
3. One of the most fascinating figures of pre-modernity,
working between the
disciplines and different worlds of knowledge, was the Neapolitan, Giovanni
Battista Della Porta (ca. 1538-1615):
author, man of letters, member of secret
societies, multiplicator,
aider and abettor of knowledge, organizer - much more
than a (natural) scientist, according to our contemporary
conceptions. In Volume
28 of Zedler’s Lexikon, 174 1, the entry for Della Porta reads: “He did much to help
establish the Academic Degli Otiosi, and he held another at his house, which was
called the Academic de Secreti, to which only members were admitted who had
discovered something new about the natural world. But the papal court prohibited
the meetings of the latter because its members allegedly engaged in forbidden arts
and studies.. . .” Della Porta’s most famous work, the 20-part encyclopaedia Mugia
Naturalis, of which both he and his chroniclers claim that he wrote the first version
“in the fifteenth year of his life”5, is a biological, physical, chemical, medical, and
philosophical
treatise and, equally, an entertaining “Book of Art and Wonders” (as
the sub-title of the German edition classifies it), a kind of early form of the popular
scientific encyclopaedia, a phantastic boundary crossing printed network of knowledge. “Wisdom and perfect knowledge of natural things” (Porta I719,2) - this is
how Della Porta characterises his understanding
of magic and in these 20 books he
undertakes a colossal and daring journey through all areas of life; from zoological
observations and the (alchemistic) transmutation
of metals and the synthetic
production
of precious stones to the investigation and composition of special
combinations
of herbs and rituals for inducing abortions and performing quasigenetic engineering (the manipulation
of the sex of unborn children),” from
treatises on artificial fire, cooking, and secret ciphers to the XVII Book of “divers
mirrors and lenses” (cited by many film archaeologists but read by very few) which
contains Della Porta’s studies on projection, reflection, and a multitude of optical
mises-en-scene. All the volumes share the same view of the world in the direct sense
of the expression: natural phenomena offer themselves to the scholar not only for
the investigation of immutable objects, for reproduction
or for mimesis; they
become material that can be altered/manipulated.
By means of the magical power of
the imagination
and experimentation
with that which is real, it should be possible
to change, transmute and also go beyond them, whereby the body - corporeality
- is, as subject, very clearly the centre.’
Let us try to make Della Porta’s - for his time - seditious relationship to
the world clearer, taking his optical studies and blueprints of optical artefacts as an
example. His starting point for the interpretation
of mirrors and lenses is precisely
the traditional and firmly established taboo, that these artefacts allegedly only
convey “false images” of the objects observed (reductions, magnifications,
distor-
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tions.. .) and therefore, in accordance with the sanctity of Divine Nature, may only
be used to correct defects of vision (that is, for spectacles and the like). This
function of the artefacts as prostheses did not interest Della Porta much at all. It
was precisely the dilations, deformations, double vision, splitting, changes of
dimension, and transmutation
of the real that fuelled his searching and driving
attention, the contrast to that which is normally visible, the visualization of the
imagination.
“How, when looking at a mirror, a pale yellow or many-coloured
form can
appear. . . that it seems as if the face is split down the middle.. . that it seems as if
one has the face of a donkey or a dog or a pig.. .” (943) - Della Porta begins his
XVII Book of the “Magia Naturalis” with these thoughts about simple arrangements of mirrors. In the fourth paragraph of Chapter II we encounter the first
astounding phenomenon:
“It is also possible, using flat mirrors, to see things that
are happening in far-off places.. .” (947) and he goes on to describe exactly an
arrangement of mirrors that, much later, Sigmund Freud installed in his study in
order to secretly observe the other people in his house. There follow detailed
descriptions of the various kinds a.nd uses of hollow mirrors that we shall meet with
again a century later, heavily embellished, in the writings of Athanasius K&her, and
then Della Porta arouses the media archaelologist’s feverish interest for the first time
in Chapter VI with his “Gesicht=:Kunst”
(Face=Art), where he demonstrates the
germ cell apparatus of the cinema: the Camera Obscura - he calls it obscurum
cu6icuLum in the latin original of 1607. H e d esires to show us “how hunting scenes
and battles and other kinds of hocus pocus can be made and performed in a
room.. . Guest performances, batrle fields, games, or what you will, so clear,
distinct, and pretty to see as though it were taking place before your very eyes,” and
he explains, “For the image is let into the eye through the eyeball just as here
through the window” (Bill Gates’ metaphors have a very long tradition); and in
describing these optical illusions he gives his imagination
free rein in the construction of living scenarios and mises-en-scene: “Namely, opposite to the room where
you desire to see this, there must be a large, level space that the sun can shine down
upon, where can be placed all manner of trees, forests, rivers, or mountains as well
as animals, and these can be real or artificial, of wood or other material.. . There can
be stags, wild boars, rhinoceroses, elephants, lions and other animals, whatever one
wants to be seen; they can slowly creep out of their corners into the space, and then
the hunter can appear and stage a hunt.. .“* (962). Then, in Chapter VIII, even the
author has to hold his breath - “in truth, the pen fell out of my hand” - in the
face of the monstrous things he wishes to divulge to us: “How an image can be
made to appear in the air without either the mirrors or the form of the thing itself
being seen.”
By means of a complicated arrangement of mirrors, Della Porta anticipates
the effect that is today organised by holographic
images. Then, in the treatises on
lenses, we are confronted with his strange conception of tele-vision: “From a
perspective [this term is destined to survive even beyond the first laboratory phase
of the technical history of television - SZ], in order that one may see farther than
one imagines, he states and explains the point of “this useful thing,” this
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“Gesicht=Kunst,”
that in this way “well-read personages can recognize things at a
distance of many miles and even stupid people can read the smallest letters of the
alphabet from a distance.” (971) Only a few decades later, at the turn of 16th
century, the physics of the visible establishes itself with the astronomical studies of
Christoph Scheiner (“rosa uysina siue &‘), Galileo Galilei (“sidereus nuncius.. .“),
and Johannes Kepler’s research on optics, the geometry of the retinal image,
encouraging the instrumentalization
of these artefacts in the service of representation, albeit enhanced representation, by means of the telescope, the microscope,
and the reversed telescope as projector. In Francis Bacon’s fantastic architecture of
science, that in 1624 he located in New Atlantis, the serious “houses of optics” are
already rigidly separated off from the somewhat dubious “house of sensory delusions, where we perform all manner of magic, sleight of hand tricks, hocus-pocus
and illusion as well as their false conclusions.” (Bacon 1982, 54). Physics and
magic, observer and interpreter, they no longer live under the same roof. In
Descartes’ “Discours de la methode,” and - particularly with regard to optics - in
the companion text “La dioptrique”
(Leyden 1637), the rational
instrumentalization
of modern times finds its exact formulation.
Notwithstanding,
the magical energy of the designs and imaginings of Della
Porta continued, in parallel, to exert their influence far into the 17th century. The
most impressive examples are found in the voluminous works of the pupil and
collaborator of Kircher, Caspar Schott (Mugia Optica 167 1) and in the studies on
technically mediated vision by Athanasius himself, who so mysteriously haunts the
pages of Umberto Eco’s Foucaultj Pendulum. Both editions ofArs magna Iucis et
umbrae of 1646 (Rome) and 1671 (Amsterdam) are heavily imbued with both
world views: on the one hand, the geometricization
of vision as a means of producing reversible image constructions, and on the other, pushing back the limits in
order to create visions of that which is generally not-seeable, for example, quasi
peep-show arrangements where a voyeur may observe how the visage of another
person is transmuted to the head of an ass or a lion or the sun with the aid of a
“Metaphor-Drum”
(“Metapherntrommel,”
Gustav R. Hocke) -we
have already
encountered this illusion technique in Della Porta’s “Hall of Mirrors;” light and
shadow plays with fixed and mobile prisms, projection apparatus like the magic
lanterns and again, even more arrangements of mirrors for the visualization of the
Other, not yet or, rather, not yet so seen. Particularly in Kircher’s iconographic
presentations, which he designed but did not actually construct in most cases, the
magic and the modern natural science view of the world run riot, side by side and
interlocked; the overlapping of fictions and imagined facticity, is also.characteristic
of his combination
studies (particularly of Ars magna sciendi, 1669) and his theoretical and fantastical works on music (Musurgia universalis, 2 volumes, 1650). In
the same way that Kircher playfully operates with various systems of characters,
especially the Hebrew, Greek and Roman alphabets, so too the concepts and signs
of mathematical and geometrical constructions converge in K&her’s work with the
symbols of the alchemists and astrologers; he links with ease mythology and science,
Jesuit theology and philosophy, to form a multiple semantic network, that we today
can only understand in its complexity with great difficulty. Here secret codes (a
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highly specialised quasi hacker language) alternate with that which appears (or
perhaps only seems to appear) to be decodable, the highly probable with sheer
improbability,
solid architecture with fragile edifices of the imaginary and the will
to change.
4. Last night we were invited to the phantastic hermetic film world created by
Ladislaw Galeta. Prime symbol of the heavens, of the cosmos, of the journey that
always ends at its starting point: the circle. We are familiar with the design of Henry
Heyl’s Phasmatrope, of Muybridges’s zoopraxiscope, of Anschutzen’s tachyloskop
and its further development into the electronic Schnellseher, of Demeny’s
phonoskop or of Marey’s photographic
gun plates: in the tradition of the Lebensrad
of the 1830s and 4Os, before film became footage it was painted or mounted on
round flat disks. Narratively, it represented a short closed circuit repeatable in quick
succession in the same or a similar way, ad infinitum.
In the 1671 Amsterdam edition ofhis Ars magna his et umbrae, Athanasius
Kircher includes an illustration of a strange device for recounting stories in circular
form, the Smicroscopin. The container held the story of Christ’s passion in eight
dramatic tableaus or scenes (Kircher uses the word simulacrum - it was not in fact
coined by him but belonged to the terminology
of the pre-Socratic thinkers and
their theories of vision). The appliance itself, hard- and sofnvare all in one, consisted of round, flat, boxes, the 1id.s of which were connected with a pin so that the
picture wheel between could be rotated. One of the lids was inset with an ocular
and the other had a round hole in it of the same diameter as the eyepiece of the
optical cylinder. The speed and rhythm of the narrative was at the discretion of the
user. It would have been easy to change the sofiware wheel. This artefact was
portable and did not require a particular kind of energy to operate it.
Kaspar Schott, Kircher’s long-standing
collaborator, published his own
treatise Magia optica - das istgeheime doch naturmassige Gesicht-undAugen-Lehr
(that is the secret yet natural science of face and eyes) in the same year (1671) that
the second edition of the Great Art of Light and Shadow appeared. In it, Schott does
not merely parade his knowledge as the bright assistant of his more famous Jesuit
colleague but surpasses the latter by far in the meticulous care and attention to
detail with which he describes the various material systems for seeing that is
transformed by the artificial. In Book Six, “Von der Spiegelkunst”
(On the Art of
Mirrors), Schott dismantles Kircher’s Allegorie-Maschine
and, using its components, experiments with a number of variations for producing images and for
projection. The art of mirrors was at its peak in the 17th century. Before it became
linear, the original idea of the material form of film as a round drum or a disk was
stubbornly persistent, although it was not until many decades later that it made a
reappearance in the shape of the videodisc and the compact disc. Initially the
storage capacity was so limited that these were only suitable for very short films. In
Henry V. Hopwood’s book, Living Pictures, published in 1899, which lists and
explains hundreds of different types of cameras and projectors for moving images,
for example, two US American patents are recorded that complemented
each other
technically. One described a camera that could capture over 200 individual images
in concentric circles on a gelatine plate about 8 inches in diameter. This machine,
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like the Lumieres’ Cinematographe,
was dual-purpose and could also be used as a
projector. Similar, but mechanically more refined, was Nelson’s spiral camera, which
had a portable casing containing the plate upon which the recording occurred.
Further, in the fathomless archive of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, there is an
artefact that in 1898 did not make very much money for its London manufacturer
whose name it bears; Kammatograph.
The diameter of the wafer-thin gelatine plates
on which the images were mounted is about twice that of a modern long-playing
record. It is hardly surprising that with the concentric circular arrangement of the
miniature images, this artefact calls to mind the early disks of mechanical electric
television. Television and cinevision developed almost in parallel, techno-historially.
5. In Georges Bataille’s economy of the universe, it is the most extravagant
planet of all: the sun. It radiates energy incessantly without ever getting anything
back from the recipients of this gift. It is expending all its energy. For over one and
a half thousand years models and experiments have been done using the sun as the
light source for projection, until first Arab scientists (around 1000 AD), and much
later Europeans, such as the polymath and alchemist Roger Bacon, developed ideas
for concrete apparatus in the form of an obscure chamber that could also operate
with light sources generated by humans.
However, real interest was not directed to the pure light of the sun. The
desire of the scientists focussed on the impure, the dark elements of this squandering planet, through which light in projection produces forms and structures.
Christoph Scheiner, who was overshadowed by Kepler and above all by Galileo, was
one of the co-founders of a physics of the visible. In order to observe sunspots,’ he
developed a heliotropic telescope, a simple device for protecting his eyes when
looking directly at the sun but also for procuring upright and inverted pictures of
sunspots. This projection machine was up to 22m in length and with its aid,
Scheiner was able to project the surface structure of the planet that he was interested in onto a piece of white paper where he could fix it (icono-) graphically. A
striking particularity
in contrast to earlier concepts of the Camera Obscura or
Camera Clausa where the observer’s position was outside: equipped with lenses,
Scheiner’s chamber was a viewing room that contained the observer.
Macuh
etiam caelo deducit ab alto - “They can even bring down the
sunspots from the sky.” In these emphatic tones the instruments that enable natural
irregularities to become temporal images are celebrated in Johannes Zahn’s famous
book of 1685 on the artificial eye.
A companion piece: in the stylised and contrived images of the magic lantern,
the spots that were made visible and analysed by scientific means take on the form
of the incarnation of evil, of the weird and uncanny. The first subjects to be painted
on transparent disks for projection using candlelight in order to throw big and
ghostly images onto walls were really devilish ones, such as Lucifer and the allegorical depiction of the flames of purgatory (as in Kircher’s first illustration of a Laterna
Magica). Images of horror run through 500 years of media history up to and into
the present day. One of the earliest, around 1420, had a particularly striking
feature: the diabolical element was very definitely imagined as feminine. The
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projectionist,
who held the lantern with a taper in his hand, wore oriental clothes
(possibly a reference to the original inventors of the magic lantern). The drawing of
the lantern was not exact; the apparatus is depicted around the image area and had
to be black so that the she-devil could make her shadowy appearance on the wall.
6. Only since Paul Virilio’s famous essay, “War and Film,” has it become
customarily postmodern to interpret advanced media technology in the context of
an original military vanishing point; war as an archimedian point to which and
from which the world of illusions is structured. Well-worn references from the
history of technology are, for example, the revolving drum, the repeating rifle and
particularly Janssen’s photographic
revolver and Marey’s photographic
gun, that he
used to shoot successive pictures of birds in flight - amongst other things.
But film - insofar as its origins can be defined at all - is not a medium that
destroys space or volume as may be concluded if it is assigned to the military
complex. For me, film means first and foremost time that is structured and formed.
For the specific history of the mechanical and electrical apparatus it makes sense to
begin the search for prime artefacts from this perspective. The wheel clock, that was
developed in this form in the mid 14th century, is a technical system whose
functionality
comprises the decisive elements for the process of shooting pictures
with a camera: the combination
of regular progress (continuity)
and graduation
(discontinuity).
The mechanical heart of the: wheel clock is the cogwheel. Its earliest known
applications are documented in the culture of ancient Egypt: Sakie was the camelpowered machine for drawing water from wells and its central component was a
gigantic horizontal wooden wheel with deep notches. Machinery for survival and
not for death. Later, the cogs of the first wooden, and later metal, wheels that
engaged exactly were the guarantee of the precisely regulated running of many
machines. This includes, of course, the cinematographs
and kinetoscopes that were
built in the early years by engineers from the clock and watch-makers’ branch of
light engineering industry. Stop &: Go, the perpetual alternation of movement and
standstill, was the binary code of 19th century industrial culture. In the cinema, it
finally achieved status in the moving image. Yet its history is nearly as old as that of
man outsmarting nature.
7. The deviant, the impure, and the image of an era. The project of film for
cinema received an enormous boost of innovative energy from physiological and
psychophysiological
research. The century of the industrial revolution was madly
keen to fathom out the functioning
of bodies, to study the movement of their
muscles and limbs (that were often enough imaginized as parts of a mechanism), to
make their energies and surges visible. Medics, biologists, physiologists, registrars,
and manic encyclopaedists from the most diverse backgrounds initially pounced on
what was nearest because it was the most obvious. They studied deviant behaviour.
For example, over the last three decades of the 19th century the Italian doctor of
medicine and criminologist,
Cesare Lombroso, developed an extensive factitious
system by which means he attempted to explain\mental,
cultural, and,social
phenomena of heterogeneity through their supposed “inscriptions”
on the body. He
analysed handwriting
and skull structure, preserved aborted fetuses, fabricated
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281
correlations between social unrest and the menstrual cycles of the female militants,
analysed drawings and songs by prison inmates and the writings of prisoners
condemned to death. Each deviant behaviour and its expression had to be recorded.
The Other, that seemed to be threatening the centre of bourgeois life, had at the
very least to be pinned down in statistics and texts if it could not be really understood.
The period photography
of Kohlrausch is paradigmatic: the walk of the
neurotic man is captured twice, once as spatial progress and once as temporal
progress. Corresponding
with the successive movements, the chronometer is
positioned above the man’s head. In this respect, Etienne Jules Marey’s set-up was
even more precise and effective. For his studies of the movements of humans and
animals, the pictures he took included a measuring tape that ran along the bottom,
plus a running clock showing the corresponding
position of the second hand. The
physiologically
orientated chronometric
and movement photographers
were not
primarily concerned - like Muybridge - with the body as a superficial sensation.
Their relationship to their objects in front of the camera was above all analytical.
That was the reason why they literally had to get on their subjects’ backs. Georges
Demeny - the assistant and later rival of Marey - did some experiments in which
he tried to capture the movements of the mouth articulating words. The aim was to
produce a basis for teaching the deaf to speak. For this purpose the pictures had to
be large. Much later, a montage of close shots of a similar kind, with semi-close ups
and long shots, became a shock-horror
experience for cinemagoers.
’
The artificial eye’s focus on the functionality
of the body already contains in
essence the beginnings of the computed, synthetic image that at the end of the 20th
century is increasingly being integrated into films. The line structures that result
from the scanning of real objects by 3-D scanners and that constitute the basis for
the generation of figures in movement by the computer, do not differ in principle
from the studies of movements done by Marey with his test persons wearing black
suits with white spots running down their extremities. There is also a striking
correspondence
with regard to the subjects: as yet, computer animation of living
beings in film is mostly restricted to monsters, to the abstruse, to humans that are
not homogeneous.
But this is -just
as it was a hundred years ago -just
a matter
of time; today of time that needs computation.
8. I probably owe you an explanation as to my intentions in constructing
these wild juxtapositions
of heterogenous phenomena from media history, and
particularly with regard to the presence of the digital media and their start into the
next century: I do not proceed.on the assumption of a coherent praxis in artistic
production
and reception with and through the media in the expanding present,
and likewise I try not to homogenize or universalize the historic development of the
media. Thinking further along the lines traced by others, Georges Bataille for
example, I attempt to think and write about the previous technical and aesthetic
and theoretical richness of the development of artefacts of media articulation
hetero-logically.
In this concept both re-construction
and the conception of possible
future developments rub together. Against the enormously growing trend toward
the universalization
and standardization
of aesthetic expression, particularly in the
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expanding telematic nets, the only strategies and tactics that will be of help are
those that will strengthen local forms of expession and differentiation
of artistic
action, that will create vigourously heterogenous energy fields with individual and
specific intentions, operations, and access in going beyond the limits that we term
mediatization.
To put it more pragmatically - I am pleading for a project of diverse praxis
with advanced media machinery. I am counting on a creative side-by-side coexistence: not in the sense of grandiose arbitrariness but rather as a division of
labour that is very necessary because we - as cinephiles, as videophiles, as
computerphiles
- do have different wishes and expectations of the obscure object
of our desire.
Synthetic images that have their referents in the real bore me, whether they
be mimetic biologies, virtual studios, actors, or effects. I hope that the most creative
computer artists will move heaven and earth into worlds that I do not know as yet,
that will expand and enrich the horizon of my fantasy. For example, Catherine
Deneuve’s expression in Bunuel’s i3elle de/our, when she looks into the Chinese
man’s box, I cannot quite imagine this as a simulation. If I feel in the mood for
audiovisual leisure or for reading sound-image-text
constructions, I will put a disk
into the CD-ROM
drive WHEN it surpasses the complexity that a book and a
videotape and an MC offers me. For fast communication
or extending my knowledge of the world (including
the world of media), I am very happy to use the
Internet or the World Wide Web (if I’ve got the time). But if I want a story about
love or life or death that goes beyond my own powers of imagination
and brings me
into contact with the Other, then I do not turn to the delirious community
of Net
users who all consider themselves artists, but rather, I spend my time with an
exceptional story-teller, I actually seek a long term confrontation
with’s single
picture, or with a musical composition
that enriches my time-experience.
And I
notice that I need this all the more when the attractors of knowledge, planning, and
organisation accelerate at a frenzied pitch.
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283
Notes
1. The
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
term
is used here in the sense of Deleuze’slGuattari’s
IO00
Pkzteaus,
a loose
and
somehow
anarchic
group of people without
bureaucratic
institutional
form.
AI1 citations
taken and translated
from the Suhrkamp
edition of the Tractatus (Frankfurt,
1963).
Cited in Jurgen Habermas:
Zwischen Erotismus
undAllgemeiner
Ekonomie.
In: J. Habermas:
Derphilosophiscbe
Diskurs der Moderne.
Frankfiut,
1985, p. 267.
For further
details on the adaptations
see Rupert Martin
, The Illustration
of the Heavenly
La&r
of John Climacus. Princeton,
19 54.
We used the Frankfurt
edition of 1607 in Latin and several translations
into German
(“ins
Teutsche”);
all citations
are from the Nuremberg
edition of 1719.
This is particularly
emphasized
by the editor of the German
translation
in the preface:
“It
would be somewhat
strange if the pregnant
girls or, rather, the careless whores, were no
longer to hold in esteem the concoctions
of SABINER
or the Seven-[Satten]
tree, if the
effect corresponds
to what he daims for the female fern [Farren-Kraut];
that as soon as a
pregnant
woman steps on it, the fruit of her womb would leave her and she would abort.
Yes, certainly,
the women would idolize him if it were certain what he claims for the herbs
PHYLLON
and MERCURIALIS;
that if a woman
drink the juice of the male plants of
these herbs, or simply place the leaves on that natural place, she would conceive
a son
without
fail.”
In his Trartatus Primus on the sun (“De Sole”) (we used the German
translation
of 1608,
edited by Joachim
Tanckium),
included
in the volume,
“Vom Stein der Weisen und von
den vornembsten
Tincturen
des Goldes..
.,” Roger Bacon always refers to the Lei6 (body)
of this precious
metal, as in this small extract from the chapter
on theory:
“‘Sofches vorwar
gescbieht dem Go&
nicht / denn 6is zum Ietzten Urtheil des Gerichts / mag die Natur dem
Lei6e des Gobs
nichts an seiner NOBILITET
unnd PERFECTION
endern o&r mindern:
Es ist such zwar eine Materia
alkr Edelgesteinen / undgibt
sie bessq von seinem Leibe und
von seiner Materia
/ dpnn sie die Naturjnah
mag und erreichen.
Und ich sage euch / 06 das
ASTRUMseine
INCLINATION
in ein solcben christeirten
Lei6 ah Gokies wenden und
IMPRIMIEREN
worde /es kundt sein VIRTUTEM
und Potentz 6io zum ktzten Urtheil
nicht verlieren. Denn ah Lei6 ist PERFECT
und allen Ekmenten
vereiniget
und angenehm i
und ist kein Element ah ihm micht s&den.
” (p. 44).
Not a word is said about the burning
question
of “the first.” Della Porta’s text without
doubt exploits
earlier writings.
For example, similar descriptions
to his can be found in
Villeneuve’s
works, written
in the 13th century, and whose ‘shows’ go quite a bit further,
prefiguring
the ‘talkies’: “ during the play he arranged
for a group of people outside the
room to make appropriate
noises, such as the din and dash of swords, or screams and
blasts...
from trumpets.”
(Hammond
1981, 9, 10).
In his major work of 1626/30,
Scheiner calls the sun “the bear rose” (rosa ursina),
in
mythology
often with the connotation
of female attributes,
as the real flower of the
goddess Venus, symbol of love, beauty and the erotic. The title of Scheiner’s
book, in
which he published
a description
of his telescopic
lense for the first time, is in latin and
takes up five lines (Refiactiones
celestes.. .) It was published
in 1617 in Ingolstadt.
Fontsand Phrasing
Alexunder Gdowuy
/
The story goes that new media, new technologies, new and faster methods of
transferring information,
democratization
of technological luxuries, diversification
of access to digital networks, the standardization
of data formats, the proliferation
of networked relations - the story goes that these advances will help usher in a
new era marked by greater personal freedom, heightened interpersonal
communication, ease from the burden of representation, new perspectives on the problem of
the body, greater choice in consumer society, unprecedented opportunities
for free
expression, and above all, that they will give us speed.
Where are those points in society today where complicity is not read as such,
where decisions are not seen as being either political or apolitical but just a choice?
Where are those points where a utopian sense of technological progress comes to us
uninterrogated?
Surely these are points worthy of greater attention. And surely these
points overlap with those above.
With the advent of computers comes the phrase “real time.” This phrase is
used when a digitized event (such as an online interactive broadcast) proceeds as if
it were in a non-virtual
setting. An event happens in “real time” if it prints, broadcasts, displays, animates, plays using the same timing and event-durations
as the
non-virtual
world. Computational
rhythms (be they too short or too long) are
masked or subordinated
to the duration of events in the “real” world. Real time,
therefore, indicates that there has emerged concurrent with computers some sort of
digital time or compressed time not parallel with traditional concepts of time. What
is the nature of this temporality?
Even if new technological
advances do not give us sheer speed, I venture to
say that they are indicative of a new form of temporality, a contemporary
sense of
timing. As a product of the electro-digital
transfer of textual information,
this
contemporary
temporality is a twofold sense of time as read through registration,
tracking, recording, documentation,
playback, scanning, connection, and protocol.
Once, it is a sense of timing, like a playing, a sculpted inflection, or a phrasing of
notes; it is a phrasing. And twice, it is no time, a singularity, a zero-wait, the utter
collapse of temporal distance; it is an instancy.
I argue here that this timing is a product of two general phenomena: a split in
the nature of the signifier caused by fonts and the electro-digital
transfer of textual
information,
and the phrasing of certain elements of popular society through
cultural slogans and corporate trademarks. These two senses of time must be
regarded as concurrent systems that emerge “at once,” so to speak, and are by no
. means mutually pre-emptive.
Digital
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285
The manipulation
of textual information
over computer networks in contexts
such as email and the internet, and specifically their mark-up in design layouts and
computer fonts tells us something about the nature of contemporary
culture. The
nature of computer fonts, network structures, and the interpretation
of digital
information
is one that evaporates traditional notions of temporal and corporal
sizings. Consequently, the incorporation
of the electronic text has been divorced
from any notion of activities requiring actual labor time: texts are loaded (derived
from a preexisting copy), displayed, saved, and erased with no connection to their
traditional labor and time intensive counterpart procedures of researching, printing,
copying, and archiving. To this extent, computer fonts are connected to our
contemporary, electronic sense of time. It is not a continuum. The temporal
difference separating fonts and texts is a no-time, a singularity.
A font is not analogous to a signifier. Rather it renders the signifier itself
internally complex. It is a sub-element of the signifier. A computer font cannot be
thought of, therefore, as a genetic element of the sign. In text for example, a font
must be thought of independently
from content, written markings, etc. Fonts are
indicative of what is known in the digital text as a protocol. They regulate representation.
The concept of zero-wait transfer governs contemporary
ideas regarding
textuality. In a digital network, much like previous types of value economies,
information
is produced in order to be exchanged or transferred. However, under
digital transfer texts are exchanged according to an atemporal logic and through
digital means. (Digital texts are those whose very content has been quantized. Socalled analog texts are those whose value alone has been quantized.)
As one contemporary
critic has noted, this transfer of textual information
” Immediation
means both immediate
occurs through a process of “immediation.
and mediated. Texts are therefore both instantaneous and second-order. They are
heard with both static and clarity. In Baudrillardian
fashion, each digital text is
derived and yet also real. Time is seemingly no longer a textual component.
Fonts mediate and incorporate (put-into-a-body)
zero-wait transferred texts.
Virtuality
is that state where texts or discourses are no longer bound by traditional
space/time laws. As Paul Virilio has recently noted, it is time itself that is rendered
instantaneous by virtuality [http://www.ctheory.com/a3O-cyberspace-alarm.html].
And thus, at this turn, computer fonts illustrate a break in traditional notions
surrounding
temporality, and representation.
Font faces appear at the intersection. They are the veneer of representation.
The font is always the first thing you read and the last thing you write. Fonts have
no body. They buffer the act of reading. They protect the reader from the shock of
virtual transfer. And fonts are those elements that are so commonly not read.
Fonts are closely connected to textual standardization
and thus the very
nature of the internet. The standardization
of data formats as a result of hegemony
or negotiated dominance (i.e. GIF format for images, character-based formats for
text, dominance of English over other natural languages, etc.) is the conceptual
framework behind HTML, or Hypertext Mark-up Language.
,
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What are the constraints of HTML? By far still the fundamental
computer
language used on the internet, HTML and the browsers that interpret it constitute
a quantitative structure of exchange that both directs textual or discursive flow, and
regulates its dissemination - if that indeed is the manner in which it is distributed.
This dynamic constitutes a true information
(or textual), economy. Ebb and flow
are governed by specific protocols. Connection is established according to certain
hierarchies. And like the logic of traditional political economy all elements conform
to formal standardization.
Computer networks are not a heterogeneity:
Computer fonts are an indication of a type of technological
complexity that
allows for wide varieties of font faces, sizes, shapes, distortions, and types of markup. However, this type of quantitative diversity is not equivalent to a real diversification of the conditions of digital texts, including distribution
networks, virtuation
apparatuses (browsers, VR hardware, and other interfaces), and mediative machinery (routers, dial-up protocols, displays).
By way of illustration,
allow me to compare these two elements. Computer
fonts do the same work in the digito-semiotic
world that HTML does in the virtual
world. They both are a set of instructions for the compilation
of contents. Fonts
compile and represent digitized texts, while HTML compiles and displays hypertextual elements. Like HTML, a computer font displays textual information
“all at
once,” and virtually. On load a derivative of each element is placed. On unload that
copy is discarded. However, computer fonts are not representation per se. They are
governing principles for representation. They are at once totally crucial in the
transfer of textual information
and yet they are completely disposable, contingent
and atemporal. They are a readable example of protocol.
Fonts, trademarks, and missjaellings - ground zero for contemPorary
negotiations concerning textuality. Today, language is negotiated and marked
through complex protocols that govern one’s ideological relationship to digital texts.
We recognize Netscape, but do we recognize their encryption protocol licensed
from RSA? (Althusser rolls in his grave.)
It is on the corporate stage where font faces, a method of visually representing
language, are regulated as an element of corporate trademarks an symbols. They are
patented, trademarked, controlled, owned, regulated, as the way that words are
formulated as readable. It is important to note that historically this was not always
the case.
Equally responsible therefore for the constitution
of temporality today is what
I term the “phrasing” of certain elements of popular society through cultural slogans
and corporate trademarks. Phrasing here should be taken quite literally, to the
extent that it refers to a constructive aestheticization, or textualization,
of everyday
life. An action is “phrased” - like a trumpet solo is phrased. It is translated into
articulated gestures; it is conducted. Phrasing also means to articulate into language.
This therefore refers to a more gestural temporality, one with a certain influence
over the “tempo of life.” It is not instantaneous or singular, but complex and
multiple. It is a non-linear affect, a systemic influence that controls both action and
discourse.
Digital
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287
As it happens, a coincidence of current modes of gestural phrasing takes the
form of a sort of lowest possible denominator
for ontological claims. Take for
example GE’s “We bring good things to life,” Coke’s “Coke is it,:’ Nike’s “Just do
it,” and Calvin Klein’s brilliantly simple “Be.” These ideological campaigns share a
confluence of strategy within which certain social relationships are naturalized. The
primary tactics here are content-evacuation
and the simplification
of complex social
relationships.
Similar to the collapsing of temporal distances as seen in electronic transfer of
information,
there is a collapsing of conceptual distances through the mating of the
nostalgic or familiar with the futuristic or alien. This is an example of the top-down
phrasing or aestheticization of everyday life. Technologico-corporate
progress (a
fetishization of time) is naturalized through the phrasing of language, especially the
juxtaposition
of disparate elements in slogan-type phrases. Here, the familiar and
the techno-alien are phrased, they are lyricized into a gestural subject fabric. The
phrase is sentimentalized,
it is repeated, it is printed on children’s pyjamas.
We remember “A long time ago/in a galaxy far, far away.” It is a perfect
example of this ideological mating of the alien and the familiar. This type of
phrasing is a real example of “repetition with a difference.” It creates a spooky
epilogue to Benjamin’s “Storyteller.”
The story goes that theory knows the power of slogans. We have Althusser’s
“hey you there!” or “I’ve strangled my wife,” and Derrida’s “I’ve forgotten my
umbrella.” . . .The story goes that theory can use slogans. But we have “E.T./phone
home,” and “Beam me up, Scatty” - both examples of the equating of dissimilar
semantic elements as part of a definite strategy. These are our political slogans. This
type of gestural language is ideologically constitutive.
The electro-digital
transfer of textual information
coupled with a general
multiplication
of media sources changes the manner in which we conceive of
temporality, itself a social discourse. This new discourse relating to time is marked
by new protocols, and as articulated above these protocols may be understood
through a reading of digital texts.
TheAestheticsof Virtual
Worllds
Report from Los Angeles
LEVMunovicb
Since this essaywas written, Netscape Navigator 3.0 introduced support
for VRh4L, thus allowing its users to navigate virtual spaces without
leaving the program; every commercial network has added support for
multi-user virtual worlds; and more than 100,000 people have become
“citizens” of AlphaWorld <www.worlds.net/alphaworld>.
Given this
rapid growth, some examples and numbers quoted in this essay will be
out-of-date. Yet; exactly because this growth promises to make networked virtual worlds an important, if not the key aspect of cyberculture, the analysis contained in the essay is becoming even more relevant.
Welcome to a Virtual World! Strap on your avatar! Don’t have the programming skills or time to build your own? No problem. We provide a complete library
of pre-assembled characters; one of them is bound to fit you perfectly. Join the
community
of like-minded
users who agree that three-dimensional
space is more
sexy! Yes, there is nothing more liberating than flying through a 3D scene, executI ing risky maneuvers and going for the kill. Mountains and valleys can represent files
on a network, financial investments, enemy troops, the body of a virtual sex partner
- ii does not really matter. Zoom! Roll! Pitch! Not enough visual realism?,For just
an extra $9.95 a month you can upgrade your rendering speed to a blistering
490,000 polygons a second, increasing the quality of the experience a staggering
27.4%! And for another $4.95 you will get a chance to try a new virtual world
every month, including a mall, a brothel, the Sistine Chapel, Paris during the
Revolution of 1789, and even the fully navigable human brain. A 3D networked
virtual world is waiting for you; all we need is your credit card number.
This advertisement is likely to appear on your computer screen quite soon, if
it has not already. Thirteen years after William Gibson’s fictional description,of
cyberspace’ and several years after the first theoretical conferences on the subject,*
cyberspace is finally becoming a reality. More than that, it promises to become a
new standard in how we interact with computer - a new way to work, communicate and play.
Digital
virtual
I
Worlds:
History
Delirium
289
and Recent Developments
Although a few networked multi-user graphical virtual environments
had
already been constructed in the 198Os, they were specialized projects involving
custom hardware and designed for particular groups of users. In Lucasfilm’s Habitat, described by its designers as a “many-player online virtual environment,”
a few
dozen players used their home Commodore 64 computers to connect to a central
computer running a simulation of a two-dimensional
animated world. The players
could interact with the objects in this world as well as with each other’s graphical
representations (avatars).3 Conceptually similar to Habitat but much more upscale
in its graphics was SIMNET
(Simulation Network) developed by DARPA (US.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). SIMNET was probably the first
working cyberspace - the first collaborative three-dimensionalvirtual
environment.
It consisted of a number of individual simulators linked to a high-speed network.
Each simulator contained a copy of the same world database and the virtual
representations of all the other simulators. In one of SIMNET’s implementations,
over two hundred M-l tank crews, located in Germany, Washington D.C., Fort
Knox, and other places around the world, were able to participate in the same
virtual battlea
I remember attending a panel at a SIGGRAPH
conference where a programmer who worked for Atari in the early 1980s argued that the military stole the idea
of cyberspace from the games industry, modeling SIMNET after already existing
civilian multi-participant
games. With the end of the Cold War, the influences are
running in the opposite way. Many companies that yesterday supplied very expensive simulators to the military are busy converting them into location-based
entertainment
systems (LBE). In fact, one of the first such systems which opened in
Chicago in 1990 - BattleTech Center from Virtual World Entertainment,
Inc. was directly modeled on SIMNET5 Like SIMNET, BattleTech Center comprised a
networked collection of futuristic cockpit models with VR gear. For $7 each, a
number of players could fight each other in a simulated 3D environment.
By 1995,
Virtual World was operating dozens of centers around the world that depended, as
in SIMNET’s
case, on proprietary software and hardware.”
In contrast to such custom-built
and expensive location-based entertainment
systems, the Internet provides a structure for 3D cyberspace that can simultaneously
accommodate millions of users, that is inherently modifiable by them, and runs on
practically every computer. A number of researchers and companies are already
working to turn this possibility into reality.
Among the attempts to spatial& the Net, the most important is VRML
(Virtual Reality Modeling L an g ua g e), w h ic h was conceived in the spring of 1994.
According to the document defining Version 1 .O (May 26, 1995), VRh4L is “a
language for describing multi-participant
interactive simulations - virtual worlds
networked via the global Internet and hyperlinked with the World Wide Web.“’
Using VRML, Internet users can construct 3D scenes hyperlinked
to other scenes
and to regular Web documents. In other words, 3D space becomes yet another
media accessible via the Web, along with text, sounds, and moving images. But
eventually a VRML universe may subsume the rest of the Web. So while currently
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the Web is dominated by pages of text, with other media elements (including
VRML 3D scenes) linked to it, future users may experience it as one gigantic 3D
world which will contain all other media, including text. This is certainly the vision
of VRML designers who aim to “create a unified conceptualization
of space
spanning the entire Internet, a spatial equivalent of wwW.“8
They see VRML as a
natural stage in the evolution of the Net from an abstract data network toward a
“‘perceptualized’
I nternet where the data has been sensualized,“” i.e., represented in
three dimensions.
VRML I .O makes possible the creation of networked 3D worlds but it does
not allow for the interaction between their users. Another direction in building
cyberspace has been to add graphics to already popular Internet systems for interaction, such as chat lines and MUDs. Worlds Inc., which advertises itself as “a
publisher of shared virtual environments))“’ has created WorldChat,
a 3D chat
environment
which has been available on the Internet since April 1995. Users first
choose their avatars and then enter the virtual world (a space station) where they
can interact with other avatars. The company imagines “the creation of 3-D worlds,
such as sports bars, where people can come together and talk about or watch
sporting events online, or shopping malls.“” Another company, Ubique’*, created
technology called Virtual Places which also allows the users to see and communicate
with other users’ avatars and even take tours of the Web together.13
Currently, the most ambitious full-scale 3D virtual world on the Internet is
AlphaWorld,
sponsored by Worlds Inc. At the time of this writing, it featured
200,000 buildings, trees and other objects, created by 4,000 Internet users. The
world includes a bar, a store which provides prefabricated housing, and news kiosks
which take you to other Web pagesI
The movement toward spatialization of the Internet is not an accident. It is
part of a larger trend in cyberculture - spatialization of all representations and
experience. This trend manifests itself in a variety of ways.
The designers of human-computer
interfaces are moving from 2D toward 3D
- from flat desktops to rooms, cities, and other spatial constructs.‘5 Web designers
also often use pictures of buildings, aerial views of cities, and maps as front ends in
their sites. Apple promotes QuickTime
VR, a software-only system which allows
the user of any personal computer to navigate a spatial environment
and interact
with 3D objects.
Another example is the emergence of a new field of scientific visualization
devoted to spatialization of data sets and their relationships with the help of
computer graphics. Like the designers of human-computer
interfaces, the scientists
assume that spatialization of data makes working with it more efficient, regardless
of what this data is.
Finally, in many computer games, from the original “Zork” to the best-selling
CD-ROM
“Myst,” narrative and time itself are equated with movement through
space (i.e., going to new rooms or levels). In contrast to modern literature, theater,
and cinema, which are built around the psychological tensions between characters,
Digital
Delirium
291
these computer games return us to the ancient forms of narrative where the plot is
driven by the spqtial movement of the main hero, traveling through distant lands to
save the princess, to find the treasure, to defeat the Dragon, and so on.
A similar spatialization of narrative has defined the field of computer animation throughout
its history. Numerous computer animations are organized around a
single, uninterrupted
camera move through a complex and extensive set. A camera
flies over mountain terrain, moves through a series of rooms, maneuvers past
geometric shapes, zooms out into open space, and so on. In contrast to ancient
myths and computer games, this journey has no goal, no purpose. It is an ultimate
“road movie” where the navigation through the space is sufficient in itself.
Aesthetics
of virtual
Worlds
The computerization
of culture leads to the spatialization of all information,
narrative, and, even, time. Unless this overall trend is to reverse suddenly, the
spatialization
of cyberspace is next. In the words of the scientists at Sony’s Virtual
Society Project, “It is our belief that future online systems will be characterized by a
high degree of interaction, support for multi-media
and most importantly
the
ability to support shared 3D spaces. In our vision, users will not simply access
textual based chat forums, but will enter into 3D worlds where they will be able to
interact with the world and with other users in that world.” What will be the visual
aesthetics of spatial&d
cyberspace? What would these 3D worlds look like? In
answering this question I will try to abstract the aesthetic features common to
different virtual worlds already in existence: computer games; CD-ROM
titles;
virtual sets in Hollywood
films; VR simulations; and, of course, virtual worlds on
the Internet such as VRML scenes, WorldChat,
and QuickTime VR movies. I will
also consider the basic technologies and techniques used to construct virtual spaces:
3D computer graphics; digitized video; compositing; and the point and click
metaphor. What follows are a few tentative propositions on the visual aesthetics of
virtual worlds.
1. Realism
as Commodity
Digit in Latin means number. Digital media reduces everything to numbers.
This basic property of digital media has a profound effect on the nature of
visual realism. In a digital representation, all dimensions that affect the reality effect
- detail, tone, color, shape, movement - are quantified. As a consequence, the
reality effect produced by the representation can itself be related to a set of numbers.
For a 2D image, the crucial numbers are its spatial and color resolution: the
number of pixels and the number of colors per pixel. For instance, a 640 x 480
image of an object contains more detail and therefore produces a stronger reality
effect than a 120 x 160 image of the same object. For a 3D model, the level of
detail, and consequently the reality effect, is specified by 3D resolution: the number
of points the model is composed of.
Spatial, color, and 3D resolutions describe the realism of static representations: scanned photographs; painted backgrounds; renderings of 3D objects; and so
on. Once the user begins to interact with a virtual world, navigating through a 3D
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space or inspecting the objects in it, other dimensions become crucial. One of them
is temporal resolution. The more frames a computer can generate in a second, the
smoother the resulting motion. Another is the speed of the system’s response: if the
user clicks on an image of a door to open it or asks a virtual character a question, a
delay in response breaks the illusion. Yet another can be called consistency: if
moving objects do not cast shadows (because the computer can’t render them in real
time) while the static background has them, the inconsistency affects the reality
effect.
All these dimensions are quantifiable. The number of colors in an image, the
temporal resolution the system is capable of, and so on can be specified in exact
numbers.
Not surprisingly, the advertisements for graphics software and hardware
prominently
display these numbers. Even more importantly,
those in the business
of visual realism - the producers of special effects, military trainers, digital
photographers,
television designers - now have definite measures for what they are
buying and selling. For instance, the Federal Aviation Administration,
which creates
the standards for simulators to be used in pilot training, specifies the required
realism in terms of 3D resolution. In 1991 it required that for daylight, a simulator
must be able to produce a minimum of 1,000 surfaces or 4,000 points’l Similarly, a
description of the Compu-Scene
IV simulator from GE Aerospace states that a pilot
can fly over a geographically
accurate 3D terrain that includes 6,000 features per
square mile.”
The numbers which characterize digital realism simultaneously
reflect
something else: the cost involved. More bandwidth, higher resolution and far;ter
processing result in a stronger reality effect - and cost more.
The bottom line: the reality effect of a digital representation canlnow be
measured in dollars. Realism has became a commodity, It can be bought and sold
like anything else.
This condition is likely to be explored by the designers of virtual worlds. If
today users are charged for the connection time, in the future they can be charged
for visual aesthetics and the quality of the overall experience: spatial resolution;
number of colors; complexity of characters (both geometric and psychological);
and
so on. Since all these dimensions are specified in software, it becomes possible to
automatically
adjust the appearanoe of a virtual world on the fly, boosting it up if a
customer is willing to pay more.
In this way, the logic of pornography
will be extended to the culture at large.
Peep shows and sex lines charge their customers by the minute, putting a precise
cost on each bit of pleasure. In virtual worlds, all dimensions of reality will be
quantified and priced separately.
Neal Stephenson’s 1992 Snow Crush provides us with one possible scenario of
such a future. Entering the Metaverse, the spatial&d
Net of the future, the hero
sees “a liberal sprinkling of black-and-white
people - persons who are accessing the
‘Metaverse through cheap public terminals, and who are rendered in jerky, grainy
Digital
Delirium
293
black and white.“18 He also encounters couples who can’t afford custom avatars and
have to buy off-the-shelf models, poorly rendered and capable of just a few standard
facial expressions - virtual world equivalents of Barbie dolls.‘9
This scenario is gradually becoming a reality, A number of online stock-photo
services already provide their users with low-resolution
photographs for a small cost,
charging more for higher resolution copies. A company called Viewpoint
Datalabs
International
is selling thousands of ready-to-use 3D geometric models widely used
by computer animators and designers. For most popular models you can choose
between different versions, with more detailed versions costing more than less
detailed ones.Zo
2. Romanticism,
Adomo,
Photoshop
Filters:
From Creation
to Selection
Viewpoint
Datalabs’ models exemplify another characteristic of virtual
worlds: they are not created from scratch but assembled from ready-made parts. Put
differently, in digital culture creation has been replaced by selection.
E. H. Gombrich’s concept of a representational
schema and Roland Barthes’s
“death of the author” helped to sway us from the romantic ideal of the artist
creating totally from scratch, pulling images directly from his imagination.*’
As
Barthes puts it, “[ t ]h e T ext is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable
centers of culture.“** Yet, even though a modern artist may be only reproducing or,
at best, combining in new ways pre-existing texts and idioms, the actual material
process of art making supports the romantic ideal. An artist operates like God
creating the universe - he starts with an empty canvas or a blank page. Gradually
filling in the details, he brings a new world into existence.
Such a process of art making, manual and painstakingly slow, was appropriate
for the age of pre-industrial
artisan culture. In the twentieth century, as the rest of
the culture moved to mass production and automation, literally becoming a
“culture industry,” art continued to insist on its artisan model. Only in the 191 OS
when some artists began to assemble collages and montages from already existing
cultural “parts,” was art introduced to the industrial method of production.
In contrast, electronic art from its very beginning was based on a new
principle: modification
of an already existing signal. The first electronic instrument
designed in 1920 by the legendary Russian scientist and musician Leon Theremin
contained a generator producing a sine wave; the performer simply modified its
frequency and amplitude. *3 In the 1960s video artists began to build video synthesizers based on the same principle. The artist was no longer a romantic genius
generating a new world purely out of his imagination;
he became a technician
turning a knob here, pressing a switch there - an accessory to the machine.
Substitute a simple sine wave by a more complex signal (sounds, rhythms,
melodies) and add a whole bank of signal generators and you have a modern music
synthesizer, the first instrument which embodies the logic of all new media: not
creation but selection.
The first music synthesizers appeared in the 1950s. They were followed by
video synthesizers in the 196Os, followed by DVE (Digital Video Effects) in the late
1970s (the banks of effects used by video editors), and followed, in turn, by
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computer software such as 1984’s MacDraw that already come with a repertoire of
basic shapes. The process of art making has finally caught up with modern times. It
has become synchronized with the rest of modern society where everything is
assembled from ready-made parts; from objects to people’s identities. The modern
subject proceeds through life by selecting from numerous menus and catalogs of
items - be it assembling an outfit, decorating the apartment, choosing dishes from
a restaurant menu, choosing which interest groups to join. With electronic and
digital media, art-making similarly entails choosing from ready-made elements:
textures and icons supplied by a paint program; 3D models which come with a 3D
modeling program; melodies and rhythms built into a music program.
While previously the great tlext of culture from which the artist created his
own unique “tissue of quotations” was bubbling and shimmering somewhere below
consciousness, now it has become externalized (and greatly reduced in the process)
- 2D objects; 3D models, textures, transitions, effects which are available as soon
as the artist turns on the computer. The World Wide Web takes this process to the
next level: it encourages the creation of texts that completely consist of pointers to
other texts that are already on the Web. One does not have to add any new content;
it is enough to select from what already exists.
This shift from creation to selection is particularly apparent in 3D computer
graphics - the main technique for building virtual worlds. The amount of labor
involved in constructing three-dimensional
reality from scratch in a computer
makes it hard to resist the temptation to utilize preassembled,
standardized objects,
characters, and behaviors readily provided by software manufacturers - fractal
landscapes, checkerboard floors, complete characters and so on.14 Every program
comes with libraries of ready-to-use models, effects or even complete animations.
For instance, a user of the Dynamation
program (a part of the popular Wavefront
3D software) can access complete preassembled animations of moving hair, rain, a
comet’s tail or smoke, with a single click.
If even professional designers rely on ready-made objects and animations, the
end users of virtual worlds, who usually don’t have graphics or programming
skills,
have no other choice. Not surprisingly, Web chat-line operators and virtual world
providers encourage users to choose from the libraries of pictures, 3D objects, and
avatars they provide. Ubique’s site features “Ubique Furniture Gallery’! where one
can choose images from such categories as “office furniture,”
“computers and
electronics,” and.“people icons.“25 VR-SIG from the UK provides a VRML Object
Supermarket while Aereal delivers the Virtual World Factory. The latter aims to
’ make the creation of a custom virtual world particularly simple: “Create your
personal world, without having to program! All you need to do is fill-in-the-blanks
and out pops your world.Zh Quite soon we will see a whole market for detailed
virtual sets, characters with programmable
behaviors, and even complete worlds (a
bar with customers, a city square, :a famous historical episode, etc.) from which a
user can put together his own “unique” virtual world.
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While a hundred years ago the user of a Kodak camera was asked just to push
a button, he still had the freedom to point the camera at anything, Now, “you push
the button, we do the rest” has become “you push the button, we create your
world.”
3. Brecht
as Hardware
Another aesthetic feature of virtual worlds lies in their peculiar temporal
dynamic: constant, repetitive shifts between an illusion and its suspense. Virtual
worlds keep reminding us of their artificiality, incompleteness, and constructedness.
They present us with a perfect illusion only to reveal the underlying machinery.
Web surfing provides a perfect example. A typical user may be spending equal
time looking at a page and waiting for the next page to download. During waiting
periods, the act of communication
itself - bits traveling through the network becomes the message. The user keeps checking whether the connection is being
made, glancing back and forth between the animated icon and the status bar. Using
Roman Jakobson’s model of communication
functions, we can say that communication comes to be dominated by contact, or the phatic function - it is centered
around the physical channel and the very act of connection between the addresser
and the addressee.27
Jakobson writes about verbal communication
between two people who, in
order to check whether the channel works, address each other: “Do you hear me?”
and “Do you understand me.)” But in Web communication
there is no human
addresser, only a machine. So as the user keeps checking whether the information
is
coming, he actually addresses the machine itself. Or rather, the machine addresses
the user. The machine reveals itself, it reminds the user of its existence - not only
because the user is forced to wait but also because he is forced to witness how the
message is being constructed over time. A page fills in part by part, top to bottom;
text comes before images; images arrive in low resolution and are gradually refined.
Finally, everything comes together in a smooth sleek image - the image which will
be destroyed with the next click.
Will this temporal dynamic ever be eliminated? Will spatialized Net become a
perfect Utopian city rather than remain a gigantic construction site?
An examination of already existing 3D virtual worlds suggests a negative
answer to this question. Consider the technique called “distancing” or “level of
detail” which for years has been used in VR simulations and is now being adapted
to 3D games and VRh4L scenes. The idea is to render the models more crudely
when the user is moving through virtual space; when the user stops, detail graduallyfills in. Another variation of the same technique involves creating a number of
models of the same object, each with progressively less detail. When the virtual
camera is close to an object, a highly detailed model is used; if the object is far away,
a lesser detailed version is substituted to save unnecessary computation.
A virtual world which incorporates these techniques has a fluid ontology that
is affected by the actions of the user. As the user navigates through space the objects
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switch back and forth between pale blueprints and fully “fleshed-out”
illusions. The
immobility
of a subject guarantees a complete illusion; the slightest movement
destroys it.
Navigating a QuickTime VR movie is characterized by a similar dynamic. In
contrast to the nineteenth-century
panorama that it closely emulates, QuickTime
VR continuously
deconstructs its own illusion. The moment you begin to pan
through the scene, the image becomes jagged. And, if you try to zoom into the
image, all you get are oversized pixels. The representational
machine keeps hiding
and revealing itself.
Compare this dynamic to traditional cinema or realist theater which aims at
all costs to maintain the continuity of the illusion for the duration of the performance. In contrast to such ton&zing realism, digital aesthetics have a surprising
affinity to twentieth century leftist avant-garde aesthetics. Bertolt Brecht’s strategy
to reveal the conditions of an illusion’s production,
echoed by countless other leftist
artists, became embedded in hardware and software themselves. Similarly, Walter
Benjamin’s concept of “perception in the state of distraction”** found a perfect
realization. The periodic reappearance of the machinery and the continuous
presence of the communication
channel in the message prevent the subject from
falling into the dream world of illusion for very long, making him alternate between
concentration
and detachment.
While virtual machinery itself already acts as an avant-garde director, the
designers of interactive media (games, CD-ROM
titles, interactive cinema, and
interactive television programs) ofien consciously attempt to structure the subject’s
temporal experience as a series of periodic shifts. The subject is forced to oscillate
between the roles of viewer and user, shifting between perceiving and acting,
between following the story and actively participating
in it. During one segment the
computer screen presents the viewer with an engaging cinematic narrative. Suddenly the image freezes, menus and icons appear and the viewer is forced’to act:
make choices; click; push buttons. (Moscow media theorist Anataly Prokhorov
describes this process as the shift from transparency to opacity - from a window
into a fictional 3D universe to a solid surface, full of menus, controls, text and
icons.2g Three-dimensional
space becomes a surface; a photograph
becomes a
diagram; a character becomes an icon.)
Can Brecht and Hollywood
be married? Is it possible to create a new temporal esthetic based on such cyclical shifts? So far, I can think of only one successful
example - a military simulator, the only mature form of interactive media. It
perfectly blends perception and ac:tion, cinematic realism and computer menus.
The screen presents the subject with an illusionistic virtual world while periodically
demanding quick actions: shooting at the enemy; changing the direction of a
vehicle; and so on. In this art form, the roles of viewer and actant are blended
perfectly - but there is a price to pay. The narrative is organized around a single
and clearly defined goal: staying alive.
Digital
4. Riegl, Panofsky,
and Computer
Graphics:
Regression
Delirium
in Virtual
297
Worlds
The last aesthetic principle of virtual worlds that I will address can be
summarized as follows: virtual spaces are not true spaces but collections of separate
objects. Or: there is no space in cyberspace.
To explore this thesis further we can borrow the categories developed by art
historians early in this century. The founders of modern art history (Alois Riegl,
Heinrich Wolfflin, and Erwin Panofsky) defined their field as the history of the
representation of space. Working within the paradigms of cyclic cultural development and racial topology, they related the representation of space in art to the spirit
of entire epochs, civilizations, and races. In his I90 1 “Die Sptrmische
Kunstindustrie,”
Riegl characterized humankind’s cultural development as the
oscillation between two extreme poles, two ways to understand space, which he
called “haptic” and “optic.” Haptic perception isolates the object in the field as a
discrete entity, while optic perception unifies objects in a spatial continuum.
Riegl’s
contemporary,
Heinrich Wolfflin, similarly proposed that the temperament of a
period or a nation expresses itself in a particular mode of seeing and representing
space. Wolfflin’s “Principles of Art History” (19 13) plotted the differences between
Renaissance and Baroque on five dimensions: linear/painterly;
plane/recession;
closed form/open form; multiplicity/unity;
and clearness/unclearness.
Finally,
another founder of modern art history, Erwin Panofsky, contrasted the “aggregate”
space of the Greeks with the “systematic” space of the Italian Renaissance in a
famous essay “Perspective as a Symbolic Form” (1924-1925).
Panofsky established a
parallel between the history of spatial representation and the evolution of abstract
thought. The former moves from the space of individual objects in antiquity to the
representation of space as continuous and systematic in modernity; in Panofsky’s
neologisms, from “aggregate” space to “systematic” space. Correspondingly,
the
evolution of abstract thought progresses from ancient philosophy’s view of the
physical universe as discontinuous
to the post-Renaissance understanding
of space
as infinite, ontologically
primal in relation to bodies, homogeneous, and isotropic
- in short, as “systematic.”
We don’t have to believe in grand evolutionary schemes but we can retain the
categories themselves. What kind of space is a virtual space? At first glance, 3D
computer graphics, the main technology of creating virtual spaces, exemplify
Panofsky’s concept of Renaissance “systematic” space which exists prior to the
objects. Indeed, the Cartesian coordinate system is hardwired into computer
graphics software and often into the hardware itself.“’ When a designer launches a
modeling program, he is typically presented with an empty space defined by a
perspectival grid, the space that will be gradually filled by the objects he will create.
If the built-in message of a music synthesizer is a sine wave, the built-in world of
computer graphics is an empty Renaissance space, the coordinate system itself.
Yet computer generated worlds are actually much more “haptic” and “aggregate” than “optic” and “systematic. )I The most commonly used 3D computer
graphics technique to create 3D worlds is polygonal modeling. The virtual world
created using this technique is a vacuum filled with separate objects defined by rigid
boundaries. A perspective projection creates the illusion that these objects belong
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Digital
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together but in fact they have no connection to each other. What is missing is space
in the sense of space-environment
or space-medium: the environment
between
objects; an atmosphere which unites everything together; the effects of objects on
one another.
Another basic technique used in creating virtual worlds - compositing
(superimposing,
keying) - also leads to an “aggregate” space. It involves superimposing animated characters, still images, QuickTime
movies, and other graphical
elements over a separate background. A typical scenario may involve an avatar
animated in real time in response to the user’s commands. The avatar is superimposed over a picture of a room. An avatar is controlled by the user; a picture of a
room is provided by a virtual world operator. Because the elements come from
different sources and are put together in real time, the result is a series of 2D planes
rather than a real 3D environment.
In summary, although computer-generated
virtual worlds are usually rendered in linear perspective, they are really collections of separate objects, unrelated
to one another. In view of this, commonly expressed arguments that 3D computer
graphics send us back to Renaissance perspectivalism, and, therefore, from the
viewpoint of twentieth-century
abstraction, should be considered regressive, turn
out to be groundless. If we are to apply the evolutionary paradigm of Panofsky to
the history of virtual computer space, it has not even achieved its Renaissance yet. It
is still on the level of Ancient Greece, which could not conceive of space as a
totality.
And if the World Wide Web and VRML 1 .O are any indication, we are not
moving any closer toward systematic space; instead, we are embracing “aggregate”
space as a new norm, both metaphorically
and literally. The “space” of the Web in
principle can’t be thought of as a coherent totality: it is a collection of numerous
files, hyperlinked
but without any overall “perspective” to unite them. The same
holds for actual 3D spaces on the Internet. A VRML file which describes a 3D
scene is a list of separate objects which may exist anywhere on the Internet, each
created by a different person or a different program. The objects have no connection to each other. And since any user can add or delete objects, no one may even
know the complete structure of the scene.
The Web has already been compared to the American Wild West. The
spatial&d
Web as envisioned by VRML (itself a product of California)
even more
closely reflects the treatment of space in American culture: the lack of attention to
space which is not functionally
used. The territories that exist between privately
owned houses and businesses are left to decay. The VIUvIL universe simply does not
contain space as such - only objects which belong to different individuals.
And what is an object in a virtual world? Something which can be acted
upon: clicked; moved; opened - in short, used. It is tempting to interpret this as
regression to the world view of an infant. A child does not think of the universe as
existing separately from himself -- it appears as a collection of unrelated objects
with which he can enter in contact: touch; suck on; grab. Similarly, the user of a
Digital
Delirium
299
virtual world tries to click on whatever is in front of him; if the objects do not
respond, he is disappointed.
In the virtual universe, Descartes’s maxim can be
rewritten as follows: “I can be clicked on, therefore I exist.”
5. The Whole
Picture
I have discussed different aesthetic features of 3D virtual worlds. But what
a future Ml-blown
virtual world feel like? What would be its overall gestalt?
One example of a highly detailed virtual world, complete with landscapes and
human beings, is provided by Disney’s 1995 “Toy Story,” the first completely
computer-animated
feature length film. Frighteningly
sterile, this is a world in
which the toys and the humans look absolutely alike, the latter appearing as
macabre automatons.
If you want to experience cyberspace of the future today, visit,the place where
“Toy Story” was made - Los Angeles. The city offers a precise model for the virtual
world. There is no center, no hint of any kind of centralized organization,
no traces
of the hierarchy essential to traditional cities. One drives to particular locations
defined strictly by their street addresses rather than by spatial landmarks. A trendy
restaurant or club can be found in the middle of nowhere, among the miles of
completely unremarkable
buildings. The whole city feels like a set of particular
points suspended in a vacuum, similar to a bookmark file of Web pages. You are
immediately
charged on arrival to any worthwhile location, again as on the Web
(mandatory valet parking). There you discover the trendy inhabitants (actors,
singers, models, producers) who look like some new race, a result of successful
mutation: unbelievably beautiful skin and faces; fixed smiles; and bodies whose
perfect shapes surely can’t be the result of human evolution. They probably come
from the Viewpoint
catalog of 3D models. These are not people but avatars:
beautifully rendered with no polygons spared; shaped to the latest fashion; their
faces switching between a limited number of expressions. Given the potential
importance of any communicative
contact, subtlety is not tolerated: avatars are
designed to release stimuli the moment you notice them, before you have time to
click to the next scene.
The best place to experience the whole gestalt is in one of the outdoor cafes
on Sunset Plaza in West Hollywood. The avatars sip cappuccino amidst the illusion
of 3D space. The space is clearly the result of a quick compositing job: billboards
and airbrushed cafe interior in the foreground against a detailed matte painting of
Los Angeles with the perspective exaggerated by haze. The avatars strike poses,
waiting for their agents (yes, just like in cyberspace) to bring valuable information.
Older customers look even more computer generated, their faces bearing traces of
extensive face-lifts. You can enjoy the scene while feeding the parking meter every
twenty minutes. A virtual world is waiting for you; all we need is your credit card
number.
would
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Digital
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Notes
1. William Gibson, Neuromancer.
New York: Ace Books, 1984.
2. Michael Benedikt, ed., Cy&erspace.Fir~t
Steps.Cambtidge,‘MAz The MIT Press, 1991
3. Chip Morningstar and ERandall Farmer, “The Lessons of Lucasfilm’s Habitat,” in
Cyberspace:First
Stqu, ed. Michael Benedict. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991, 273302.
4. Howard Rheingold, KrtualReuliq
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991,360-361.
5. See Tony Reveaux, “Virtual Reality Gets Real,” New Media, January 1993,39.
6. Virtual World Entertainment, Inc., Press Release, SIGGRAPH ‘95. Los Angeles, August 611, 1995.
7. Gavin Be& Anthony Parisi and Malrk Pesce,“The Virtual Reality Modeling Language.
Version 1.0 Specfication,” May 26,1995. WWW document.
8. Mark Pesce, Peter Kennard and Anthony Parisi, “Cyberspace.” WWW document.
9. Bell, Parisi and Pesce.
10. See http://www.worlds.net/info/aboutus.htmI.
11. Richard Karpinski, “Chat Comes to the Web,” Interactive Age, July 3, 1995,6.
12. See http://www,ubique.com/.
13. In September of 1995, Ubique was purchased by America Online - a significant
development since America Online is already the most graphically oriented among the
commercial networks based in the US.
14. See http://www.worlds.net/aIphaworld/.
lS.‘For instance, Silicon Graphics developed a 3D file system which was showcased in the
movie Jurassic Park. The interface of Sony’s MagicLink personal communicator is a
picture of a room while Apple’s EWorld greeted its users with a drawing of a city,
16. Barbara Robertson, “Those Amazing Flying Machines,” Computer Graphics World, May
1992, 69.
17. Ibid.
18. NeaI Stephenson, Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Books, 1992, 43.
19. Ibid., 37.
20. See http://www.viewpoint.com.
2 1. E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960; Roland
Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image, Music, Text, ed. Stephen Heath. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
22. Barthes, 142.
23. BuIat GaIeyev, Soviet Fatut. Lev i’%eremin - Pioneer ofEkctonic
Art, (in Russian).
Kazan, 1995,19.
24. For a more detailed anaIysis of realism in 3D computer graphics, see Lev Manovich,
‘Assembling Reality: Myths of Computer Graphics,” Ajerimitge
20, no. 2. September
1992, 12-14.
25. See http:Ilwww.ubique,com/places/gaIlery.htmI.
26. See http://www.virtpark.com/factinfo.htm.
27. See Roman Jakobson, “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics,” in Srylr 1n Language,
ed. Thomas Sebeok. Cambridge, MAz The MIT Press, 1960.
28. Waher Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in
Illuminations,
ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schochen Books, 1969.
29. Private communication, September 1995, St. Petersburg.
30. See Lev Manovich, “Mapping Space: Perspective, Radar and Computer Graphics,” in
SIGGRAPH
93 Visual Proceedings,
ed. Simon Penny. New York: ACM, 1993.
Deregulation/Globalisation
The Loss of Cultural Diversity?
Bernburd Serexbe
Towards
Another
“Brave
New World”?
‘Today, we are witnessing the rapid installation of the complex systems that
will become the technological and commercial foundations of a “global information
infrastructure.”
This new, interactive communication
space will doubtlessly fimction as a powerful tool in the service of the economy, but it will also be at the centre
of radical and far-reaching changes in our societies. From this point of view, the
simple admiration ofwhat are merely technical advances, coupled with present-day
justifications of a primarily economic nature, threatens to prevail over the higher
interests of the cultural life and the social functioning
of the peoples of Europe.
Among the undeniable responsibilities of public authorities are the protection of
essential community functions against possible encroachment and the promotion
of
the enormous potential of these new technologies for the cultural and social
development of all our societies.
I
I .
Present-Day
Monopolistic
Trends in the Future
Multimedia
Market
Observation of the world’s financial markets reveals transactions of vital
importance in all sectors of the cultural industries. Economic experts already predict
a planetary market of several thousand billion dollars by the year 2000. For the first
time in human history, the cultural sector which, by its nature, is not preoccupied
with the race for raw materials, is promising profit-earning
capacities that will
exceed those of the traditional material-based industries.
The market is developing exponentially and is marked by cutthroat competition between strategic alliances and mass buyers at the centre of a rapid convergence
of three previously separate sectors: audio-visual, computer technology and telecommunications.
Currently, a very small number of world-wide
corporations are
active in this market. They are all impatient to reap profits from their huge investments by setting up the technical, legal and commercial norms best suited to their
own involvement in this future world market.
At the same time, in the movement towards the creation of ever more
powerful trusts, these same groups manage to take advantage of the discrepancies
between national legal frameworks. In the last several years, a handful of giants in
the computer and communication
world have acquired the status of “global
e
302
Digital
Delirium
players, ” dominating
the activities of the other, weaker competitors in the market.
The absence of international
law in this field, coupled with the scale of the necessary financial investment encourages this tendency towards concentration.
In view of the imminent liberalisation
and probable homogenisation
of this
world market, it is impossible not to see that the main objective pursued by these
cultural industries is nothing other than the most profitable exploitation
of their
audio-visual products and future on-line services. The recommendations
of the
main representatives of the cultural industries of Europe, Japan and the United
States at the February 1995 G7 conference, held in Brussels, gave clear warning of
this single-minded
interest. Alongside the demands for a speed-up in the deregulation of the markets and the conclusion of agreements as to certain technical norms,
much concern was also expressed as to the public’s confidence in this information
society. Without this confidence, according to these recommendations,
the extraordinary gains to be won from the information
revolution could not be completely
realised.
In the context of the multimedia
industry’s concern about public mistrust, it
is worth quoting Gerald Levin, president of one of the world’s leading multimedia
giants, Time-Warner,
who argues that “the consumer has never known what he
wanted before the industry made him an offer” (Der Spiegelspecial, March 1995,
p. 31).
Promoted, then, by an essentially economic discourse, the result of this
crusade on a world-wide
scale will be the undermining
of all sorts of social and
ethical norms and the rapid evolution towards a new society, already baptised the
“information
society.”
Although no one can yet measure the scope of the impact of new technologies on cultural life and on the functioning
of our societies, or predict the physiognomy of this “information
society,” by making us accept its purely technical logic,
the promises associated with this illusory vision already outline its marvellous
advantages. These are the creation of tens of millions of new jobs by the year 2000,
the availability of an educational tool of tremendous significance, a more democratic society, the prospect of free access to information
by anyone and everyone,
both as consumers and producers. Also expected is the imminent arrival of a better
standard of living for Europe, Japan, the United States and, subsequently, to quote
the industry’s own recommendations
at the G7 Brussels conference, for “the other
regions of the world.”
The Information
Highway
Project
The investigation of the me.ans of distribution
that will bring about all these
advantages reveals a multitude of different techniques, including cable transmission,
fibre optics, and satellites. All of these, however, rely on the concept of a high
bandwidth,
inter-operational
global network, generally termed the “information
highway.”
Constructed by the powerful partners of the telecommunications
industries
and, in order to obtain a return on the enormous investments required, the infrastructure of this new interactive communication
space must serve the same inves-
Digital
Delirium
303
tots, in their capacity as producers and distributors. This will occur through the
practically unlimited transmission of information
and the exploitation,
on a
planetary scale, of a multitude of new services, generally classed under the somewhat vague term of “multimedia”:
tele-working, tele-shopping,
e-mail, instant L
video, access to administrative
services, and even electronic voting.
This notion of the information
highway, suggesting universal and free access
for each and every one of us as consumers, has a prerequisite: the user must dispose
of the adequate cultural capital and the financial means to acquire the tech+
devices involved and to access the different services offered, which can only be payservices, and probably expensive ones at that.
It goes without saying that the essential applications foreseen by the technicians of the powerful industrial groups will go far beyond the present-day and often
libertarian experiments in the use of the Internet. As a fantastic instrument of free
and individualistic
exchange in the fields of science and artistic creation, the
Internet cannot really be considered as a precursor to the information
highway
projects, except in the limited sense of its acceptance by a specialised public and in
its technical operating modes.
In the face of today’s clear trend towards an oligopolistic market, it is necessary to distinguish between the “cyberspace” myth, a vision of a virtual, cosmopolitan and liberal universe, and the industrial project of the “information
superhighway,” a powerful t‘ns t rument in the advanced marketing of audio-visual products
and other pay services. Contrary to the democratic pretensions in which the
information
and image industries would have us believe, the “info-cracy” may also
have an inherently totalitarian tendency. In the case of their progressive monopolisation, the new technologies may also turn out to be an instrument for the worst of
totalitarianisms,
that of a “brave new world” in which everyone will be content,
well-informed
about all he or she should know in order to play a useful role, but
ignorant of the rest, which need not be known, and amused permanently, even to
satiety.
Before leaving the field of action open to a purely economic discourse, it is
necessary then to address some of the major issues in a more precise manner,
associating cultural dynamics and the new interactive communication
spaces in
Europe.
Identities
and Cultrural
Expressions
From whatever viewpoint, a fair appraisal of the reality of the European
situation must cpnsider the extraordinary
cultural richness of the countries of
Europe as the product both of an ancient and shared historical evolution and of an
extraordinarily
large range of regional traditions. The essential characteristic of this
shared culture is its spirit of openness. There is no doubt that European culture has
profited from the selection, interpretation
and subsequent assimilation of external
and older cultural evolutions, which cannot be dissociated from its own specific
identity. Generally, this appropriation
was the result of acts of conquest which led
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Digital
Delirium
to domination
and even the suppression of other cultures. By the same token, other
cultures have evolved thanks to the intense enrichment brought to them by European cultural values.
Conscious of the composite and fragile nature of its own cultural identity,
Europe must today show exemplary responsibility where its own cultural heritage is
concerned, and with regards to its present-day and future cultural life. This respon.
sibility must involve a greater sensitivity m its contacts with other cultures. Inescapably bound up in permanent exchanges with other evolving cultures, the dynamics
of European culture can only be impoverished and compromised
by misguided
protectionism.
Yet, at the same time, faced with the enormous initiatives launched by the
United States and by Japan, we also feel deep concern - and justifiably so regarding the preservation of cultural expressions and identities in Europe. Waiting
for the wave of multimedia
products to unfurl, products of more or less limited
value, designed, fabricated and homogenised to be easily sold on the world market,
this concern anticipates the threat of a profound upheaval in the European media
landscape; thanks to the powerful instrument which the information
highway
represents, this landscape could be submerged by an ocean of images of which only
the smallest proportion
has any redeeming artistic content.
The Specific
Interest
of the European
Heritage
in Multimedia
Creation
Today, in the multimedia world, European backwardness is often bemoaned,
from the perspective of the United States and Japan. But the main question here
should not be the preoccupations
of European industries, unable to profit fully
from the vast potential of a finure market. Everywhere in Europe the traditional
cultural sectors are threatened by budgetary cuts, while at the same time there is a
scramble to invest in the multime~dia sector, in order to stand up against the
gigantic economic investments of the Americans and the Japanese.
Thanks to its deep roots, enormous diversity and extraordinary
richness,
European heritage constitutes the cultural treasure at the centre of the specific
interest of the multimedia
industry. The new interactive communication
space will
enlarge our horizons: but the price to pay for this incredible mass of ever-updated
information
may also be a loss, a loss difftcult to appreciate, in the direct and
sensorial contact between ourselves and reality. The rapid evolution of the global
multimedia
market, pushing the traditional arts and media into the background,
may compromise the values and contents of the European heritage, levelling them
down to a lowest common denominator.
In the long term, the result of this
globalisation
may be an irreversible loss of European cultural identity.
As the information
revolution accelerates, calling on ever-greater financial
investments, only a vast intensification
of the creative approach, throughout
Europe, can succeed in counterbalancing
a total commercialisation
of the cultural
sector. Yet the creative participation
of all the cultural actors can only be initiated by
a cultural policy directed in common at the European level. And the European
multimedia
industry, by accepting a larger share of responsibility
for multimedia
artistic creation, can only profit from this engagement in its own field.
Digital
Mobilisation
of tbe Cultural
Delirium
305
Actors
If public authorities in Europe leave the field open to the economic interests
of the “global players” in the vital sectors of information
and communication,
they
must, in the interests of preserving our societies’ cultural identity, establish norms
that will ensure the beneficial use of new technologies. In order to prevent an
irreversible impoverishment
of European culture, the control of content and of its
communication
cannot be left to the sole ambitions of the industrial and commercial parties.
At the risk of encouraging Euro-scepticism,
it should be stated that a better
promotion
of the enormous potential of new technologies for the cultural and
social life of all our societies can only come about through a concerted harmonisation of cultural and economic policies. These must take into account and respect
the cultural richness and diversity of all the societies in Europe and encourage the
creative participation
of all its cultural actors.
This necessary mobilisation
of creative resources could be based on a growing
number of initiatives in the artistic domain. In anticipation
of the promising results
expected from the association between art and new technology, research centres and
centres of artistic experimentation
have emerged in art schools throughout
Europe.
For several years, there have been exhibitions and festivals in this same field. Along
with these initiatives, which are often of an institutional
nature and which denote a
growing acceptance of these new media by the concerned public, we also see the
emergence of a large number of “private” cultural initiatives in the field of electronic
networks, such as the Internet.
The aim of these initiatives is the study of specific techniques and the
realisation and presentation of total multimedia works of art. They aim to promote
innovation and also to criticise blind enthusiasm for the new communication
technologies. In order to preserve Europe’s identity and cultural diversity, and bring
new life to it, it is precisely in this direction that the concerted efforts of its cultural
and economic policies should be oriented.
TheTechnologyOf
Uselessness
Criticd Art Ensemble
I am useless, but God loves me.
\
Mike KeUy
The expectation that technology will one day exist as pure utility is an
assumption that frequently surfaces in collective thought on the development of
society and social relations. This prospect has typically suggested two opposite
scenarios of the future. On one hand, there is the utopian millennium
predicted by
modern thinkers who were guided by belief in progress; this concept slowly began
to supplant belief in the concept of providence during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Both concepts were characterized by belief in the unilinear development of the
human race, but providence was a force that was expected to result in spiritual,
rather than in economic, autonomy. The engine of providence was considered the
guiding hand of God (which was later amputated and stitched to.the cyborg of
capitalism by Adam Smith). In Early Modernity, when belief in providence began
giving way to belief in progress, intellectuals and scholars were debating whether the
social utopia of the future should be based on spiritual or on secular principles.
Philosophers searched for an independent
force in the universe that could save the
earthly population
from its economic shortcomings and its spiritual privation.
Thomas More constructed a rather dubious literary utopia that marked the beginning of the shift from God/Christ
to science/technology
as savior. From More’s
perspective, neither of the two choices seemed particularly satisfying. Given the
choice between El Dorado and the regime of Mahomet the Prophet, Voltaire found
the former more tolerable. This type of thought which valued secular human
advancement and cast doubt on spiritual systems began to tip the scales of
judgment in favor of science and technology, but certainly no celebration accompanied this shift. With the coming of the industrial revolution, the scales tipped
decisively in favor of science and technology once and for all. At last, a foreseeable
end was imagined to the problem of production
- soon there would be enough
goods for everyone, and with such surplus, competition
over scarce goods would
cease. The idea of progress began to flourish from this point on. Both the left
(Condorcet and Saint-Simon)
and. the right (Comte and Spencer) shared an
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optimism about the future in spite of the wildly divergent destinies predicted by
each - for example, council socialism was anticipated by Saint-Simon,
and the
appearance of th e b ourgeois Ubermensch was expected by Spencer.
Let us not forget Marx in this thumbnail sketch. Although Marx was not one
to wax utopian very often, he did have his moments. Marx believed that the factory
system would solve problems of production (i.e., scarcity); however, he foresaw a
new problem, that of distribution.
The crisis in distribution
would in turn lead to
revolution, by which means the victorious workers would restructure the exploitive
routes of bourgeois distribution.
Such speculation has continued to manifest itself
even later, in utopian visions well exemplified by Rem? Clair in the film A Now la
Libertk.
The film depicts a time after the glorious revolution when the workers
enjoy the fruits of zero work, and live only to celebrate, to drink, and to sing, while
the machines work dutifully, p ro d ucing the goods needed to carry this utopia into a
shining future. One of the main currents in modern art (Futurism, Constructivism,
and Bauhaus) illustrated this soon-to-come secular utopia. All the same, it would be
quite unfair to hang the sometimes shameful optimism of the 20th century on
Marx. Although he demonstrated how rationalized capitalist economy would end
the problem of production,
he also realized that people could not be satisfied by
goods alone. Marx foresaw that in the epoch of capitalism, although production
rates would rise, so would the degree of alienation from our own human nature,
from economic process, from economic products, and from other social beings. In
terms of individuals’ psychic condition, things would not get better, but would
J
grow tortuously worse. For Marx, once other variables besides production were
examined, unilinear social advancement was not to be found.
This brings us to the second scenario - the pessimists’ dystopia. This point
of view seems to gain new proponents with each new mechanized and/or electronic
war. Yet even when the idea of progress was at its apex, before the military catastrophes of the 20th century, some critics of the idea were already predicting that
human “advancement”
would end in disaster. First and foremost was Ferdinand
Tonnies, who argued that advanced technology would only serve to increase the
complexity of the division of labor (society), which in turn would strip people of all
the institutions that are the basis of human community (family, friendship, public
space, etc.). After World War I, Oswald Spengler was among the leaders of this line
of thought. To his mind, advanced technology and sprawling cities were not
indications of progress; rather, they were indicators of the final moments of civilization - one that has hit critical mass and is about to burn itself out. The great
sociologist Pitirim Sorokin summed up this perspective in The Crisisof Our Age
when he stated:
Neither
happiness,
nor safety and security, nor even material comfort
has been realized. In few periods of human history have so many
millions
of persons been so unhappy,
so insecure,
so hungry
and
destitute,
as at the present time, all the way from China to Western
Europe.
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Here then are the two sides, forever in opposition. Today the two antithetical
opinions continue to manifest themselves throughout
culture. Corporate futurologists sing the praises of computerized information
management, satellite communications, biotechnology,
and cybernetics; such technological miracles, they assure us,
will make life easier as new generations of technology are designed and produced to
meet social and economic needs with ever-greater efhciency. On the other hand, the
concerns of pessimists, neoluddites, retreatists, and technophobes ring out, warning
that humanity will not control the machines, but that the machines will control
humanity, In more fanciful (generally Hollywood)
moments, the new dystopia is
envisioned as a world where people are caught in the evil grip of a self-conscious
intelligent machine, one that either forces them into slavery, or even worse, annihilates the human race.
These are the two most common narratives of social evolution in regard to
technology. For the utopians, the goal of progress is similar to the vision of RenC
Clair - technology should become a transparent backdrop that will liberate us
from the forces of production,
so that we might engage in free hedonistic pursuits.
For the dystopians, technology represents a state apparatus that is out of control the war machine has been turned on, no one knows how to turn it off, and it is
running blindly toward the destruction of humanity.
Evidence can certainly be found to support both of these visions, but a third
possibility exists, one that is seldom mentioned because it lacks the emotional
intensity of the other two. To expand on the suggestion of Georges Bataille, could
the end of technological
progress be neither apocalypse nor utopia, but simply
uselessness? Pure technology in this case would not be an active agent that benefits
or hurts mankind: it could not be, as it has no function. Pure technology, as
opposed to pure utility, is never turned on; it just sits, existing in and of itself.
Unlike the machines of the utopians and dystopians, not only is it free of humanity,
it is free of its own machine function - it serves no practical purpose for anyone or
anything.
Where are these machines? They are everywhere - in the home, in the
workplace, and even in places that can only be imagined. So many people have
become so invested in*seeing technology as a manifestation of value or anti-value,
that they have failed to see that much of technology does nothing at all.
Recently, there has been considerable fascination with the perception that
most people cannot learn to opera.te their video tape decks. As one comedian put it,
“I just bought a VCR for $400, and can’t figure out how to work it. $400 is just too
much for a clock that only blinks 12:O0.” This situation is certainly exaggerated,
but there is an interesting point of truth in it. To program many of the functions on
a VCR require skills beyond those of the average consumer. When video first hit the
consumer markets, the belief was that everyone would soon have a TV studio in
h/er house (along with a jet pack).. The home TV studio would mark the end of
progress in video production.
Instead, VCRs filled with useless computer chips now
gather cobwebs in home entertainment
centers. For example, consider the existence
of a chip which al1ows.a VCR to be programmed for a month in advance; this is
actually nothing more than an homage to the useless. It simply exists in and of
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309
itself, having no real life finrction. Most programming
information
is not generally
available a month in advance, and even if it were, why would someone need to tape
a month’s worth of television programs, and who would remember the appropriate
times to insert new blank tapes?
Why such a chip was made in the first place falls into a web of possibility that
is difftcult to untangle. First, the perverse desires that consumers associate with
utility should not be underestimated.
Driven by spectacularized engines of desire,
consumers want more for their money - even if what they get is something that
will never be used. The corporate answer is to meet a cliche with a cliche: Give
customers what they want. Consequently, the marketing departments of corporations, in their struggle for market share in the electronics industry, force their
engineers and designers tocreate new products laden with extra features. One main
selling point: Our machine has the most features for the money. The question for
the consumer is: “Did I get a good deal [i.e., the most for the money]?” The
question of “Can I actually use what I buy?” is never raised. The corporations know
of the desire for the useless (a desire that can never be fulfilled), and comply by
’
heaping on their products as much useless gadgetry as possible in order to seduce
the bargain-hungry
consumer.’ And so the cycle starts.
The cycle begins to’spiral as new generations of technology are introduced in this case depurified technology. The slogan of one electronics company - “so
smart, it’s simple” 1 is symbolic of depurification.
The corporation is, in a sense,
announcing
that its technology actually has a use. Consumers can buy it not just for
the sake of having it, but because they will be able to make it do something. The
slogan also signals that consumers are buying the privilege of being stupid (the
ultimate commodity
in the realm of conspicuous consumption).
There will be no
manuals to read, no assembly, no understanding
required. The manual is the TV
commercial for the product. Having seen it, consumers can make the product
function.
While the buying patterns of those seduced by pure technology are guided by
a perverse consumer activism, thoroughly corrupted by the Veblenesque nightmare
of conspicuous consumption,
the patterns of those buying impure technology are
guided by a need to keep the apparatus of use as invisible as possible, so as not to
interrupt the trajectory of one’s “lifestyle.” This attempt to return to impure
technology eventually backfires, and the spiral becomes a circle again. The consumer zeal for simple technology that will not distract from daily tasks is too easily
rechanneled into specialized products that rarely deliver the convenience that is so
desperately sought. Two types of products emerge from this variety of artificially
generated desire. First there is the product that is a con, such as an electric martini
shaker. This is one case where the old fashioned way works just as well if not better.
The second type is exemplified by a consumer-grade
pasta making machine. One
evening at home with this gizmo will quickly teach a person the meaning of labor
intensification.
This is not a technology of convenience. Either way, these pieces of
bourgeois wonder will take their rightful pl ace in upper cabinets and in closets as
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useless pieces of bric-a-brac that did not even serve the function of delivering
enriched consumer privation. Unlike the VCR chip, these pieces of technology
require human contact before they achieve purity.
In all cases, the desire that consumer economy (the economy of surplus) has
most successfully tapped is the need for excess, that is, the need to have so much
that it is beyond human use. Pleasure is derived through negation - by not using a
product. This form of excess is the privilege of those who enjoy the surplus of
production.
Although the bourgeoisie has never achieved the purity of uselessness of
previous leisure classes, they still aspire with great fear, and with very little success,
to total counter-production.
This class typically falls short of the upper level of the
hierarchy of master and slave so aptly articulated by Hegel. The products which
members of this class consume transform themselves into stand-ins for the obscene
debauchery of excess, in.which, they, as chieftains, should personally participate.
The cowardice of the bourgeoisie can never be underestimated.
Confronted
with
the opportunity
to test the limits of the possible, they instead let things take their
place in the realm of the useless. Within this realm, the products of counterproduction
acquire a being analogous to that of the sacred in “primitive”
cultures,
and become the icons of secular transcendentalism,
accumulating
mana by controlling the lives of those around them.
The uncanny notion that technology which is out of sight and out of mind
best defines human existence within the economy of desire is one that is typically
resisted by commonsense thought. As William James and Alfred Schutz proposed in
their own unique ways, the principle of practicality structures everyday life. Objects
are perceived first and foremost in terms of their instrumental value. In constructing a model of individual existenc’e centered around perception, there can be little
doubt that the visible will be at the center and the invisible at the margins. Within
the middle ground, utility is the primary governing factor. Hence, within this
visible realm, the consumption
of excess and excess consumption
maintains an
element of practicality. For example, a wealthy person buys a luxury car. Although it
may have many useless elements, the main reason for its purchase is that it is a “nice
ride.” The modifying adjective “nice” refers to its useless components, while the
center component, the noun “ride,” refers to the product’s function. The potential
for the car to make an instrumental
process pleasurable is what relegates it to the
realm of desire and excess, and therefore makes it suitable as a product for conspicuous consumption.
Another example is the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) device. In many
cases, the way this diagnostic tool is used in medical institutions may actually be
abuse. The MRI is a very expensive piece of state of the art med-tech, so it is an
investment that must be used to recoup the initial capital expenditure. The MRI
can deliver on its corporate promise, as it is the perfect medical sight machine. In a
manner far beyond any of its predecessors, the MRI can articulate the space of the
body with such clarity that there can be no place for a biological body invader to
hide. However, in many cases, the MRI is not needed. An X-ray is often all that is
required to diagnose an illness. Excess enters this equation when the MRI is used
abusively on the part of the doctor (simply as means to increase profit or to protect
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311
capital). Much the same can be said even when the machine is used as an extra
precaution by the doctor or the patient. In any case, the MRI, like the luxury car,
can only strive toward purity; it will never actually reach it. The MRI will always
have the practical function of vision associated with it. Unlike these aforementioned
examples, the useless is rarely noticed, because it is not a part of limited bourgeois
excess. As consumers, we are not trained to witness uselessness or consciously value
it - its psychic roots are buried much deeper in consciousness and in the economy.
Too often, excessive luxury in the center realm of the visible is mistaken for
the limits of excess, but the limits of excess go far beyond the visible. To comprehend extreme excess, one must go beyond conspicuous consumption.
Excess will
never be seen, only imagined, and within this ideal space the margins can at least be
understood. Whether it is a useless chip in the bowels of a machine, the technology
that lives in people’s closets, or an underground
missile system, the purity of
uselessness, the limits of excess, are not visible. The real deployment of power flows
in absence, in the uncanny, nonrational margins of existence.
Sacrifices beyond the boundary between the visible and the invisible occasionally surface in everyday life. We all know that many people die on the roads and
highways of the US every year (approximately
50,000 per year). These people are
willingly and uselessly sacrificed to show the sincerity of our desire for transportation technology, No means to end this sacrifice exists, short of closing the roads,
and yet no honor is paid to those who give their life for the excess of travel - it
remains forever hidden. Philosopher and artist Gregory Ulmer proposed that an
addendum be made to the Viet Nam war memorial in which the names of those
killed on the highway would be spooled off on a printer beside the monument.
Needless to say this monument was rejected, since such sacrifice and excess must
remain hidden in modern societies. To monumentalize
death and uselessness is
simply too frightening.
Monuments
to the sacrifices of the state are typical, but are only the beginning. Most of these monuments are abstracted bits of concrete, marble, bronze, or
some other material that will signify the longevity of artificially created memory.
But there are times when these monuments are brutally honest, and useless technology along with its slaves is put on public display. The USS Arizona, for example a half sunken ship with the ship’s full complement of corpses (officers included)
rests silently in Pearl Harbor. This national monument, a functional item made
useless through sacrifice, suggests the metaphysical moment of profound loss
through its lack of function. (Woe to anyone who does not treat this sacred relic
with proper respect, for it speaks of the will to excess, which is grounded in human
uselessness in the face of death). But what is even more compelling about this
monument is that the ship is carried on the active duty roster. This necropolis is
more a symbol of the absent core of the war machine than a monument to the US
soldiers who died in the battle of Pearl Harbor; it monumentalizes
transcendental
uselessness.
Utopian technology is that technology which has fallen from grace. It has
been stripped of its purity and reendowed with utility. The fall is necessitated by a
return to contact with humanity. Having once left the production
table, the
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technology that lives the godly life of state-of-the-art uselessness has no further
interaction with humans as users or as inventors; rather, humans serve only as a
means to maintain its uselessness. The location of the most complex pure technology is of no mystery. Deep in the core of the war machine is the missile system.
Ultimately, all research is centered around this invisible monument to uselessness.
The bigger and more powerful it becomes, the greater its value. But should it ever
be touched by utility - that is, should it ever be used - its value becomes naught.
To be of value, it must be maintained, upgraded, and expanded, but it must never
actually do anything. This idol of destruction is forever hungry, and is willing to eat
all resources. In return, however, it excretes objects of utility. Consumer communications and transportation
systems, for example, have dramatically improved due to
the continuous research aimed at increasing the grandeur of the apparatus of
uselessness.
There can be a stopping point to this process - a discovery made by the
collapsing Soviet Union. For all the “patriots of democracy” who gave a collective
sigh of relief and boasted that they were at last proven right - “communism
doesn’t
work” - there still may be a need to worry. The fall of the USSR had little to do
with ideology. The US and USSR were competitors in producing the best apparatus
of uselessness in order to prove its own respective Hegelian mastery of the globe.
Modern autocrats and oligarchs have long known that a standing army puts an
undue strain on the economy. To be sure, standing armies were early monuments to
uselessness, but in terms of both size and cost, they are dwarfed by the standing
missile system of the electronic age. As with all things that are useless, there will be
no return on the investment’in
it. The useless represents a 100% loss of capital.
Although such investment seems to go against the utilitarian grain of visible
bourgeois culture, whether in soci;alist or in constitutional
republics, the compulsive
desire for a useless master is much greater (Japan is an interesting exception to this
rule). Unfortunately
for the USSR., they were unable to indulge in pure excess
expenditure at the same rate as the US. The soviet techno-idol was a little more
constipated, and could not maintain the needed rate of excretion. Consequently,
once the limits of uselessness were reached, that system imploded.
The US government, on the other hand, has to this day remained convinced
that further progress can be made. Reagan and his Star Wars campaign issued a
policy radically expanding the useless. Reagan, of course, was the perfect one to
make the policy, since he was an idol to uselessness himself. He represents one of
the few times that uselessness has taken an organic form in this century. (This is
part of the reason he was considered such a bourgeois hero. He was willing to
personally plunge into uselessness without apology. He did not let a thing stand in
for him). Playing on yuppie paranoia (the fascists’ friend), Reagan convinced the
public loyal to him that a defensive monument’(Star
Wars) to uselessness was
needed, just in case the offensive monument (the missile system) was not enough.
He was successful enough in his plea to guarantee that years of useless research will
ensue that no one will be able to stop, even if his original monumental
vision (a net
of laser armed satellites) should be erased. In this manner, Reagan made sure that
the apparatus of uselessness would expand even if the cold war ended.
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313
Indeed, this situation has come to pass. Currently, the US has no competitors
in the race to uselessness, but the monument continues to be maintained and even
to grow, which is particularly odd, since even the cynical argument of deterrence is
now moot. Even though the offensive monument to uselessness seems to be
shrinking - missiles are being defused and cut apart with the care and order of
high ritual, and technology costing millions of dollars is being laid to rest, having
never done anything but exist - thanks to Reagan’s farsightedness, the general
system continues to expand. Although many are still in denial, the desire of the
bourgeois to subordinate themselves to the useless has become, for the moment,
glaringly visible. The research is done, the system is upgraded, but for what reason?
The missiles are now aimed at the ocean, so that even if they are “used,” they will
still be useless. The fragments of Star Wars technology have not been released in
pure form from the experimental labs, and even if they were, no enemy exists
against which Star Wars technology would protect US citizens. The American
system has achieved utter transcendental uselessness. This techno-historical
moment
is the highest manifestation of technological purity.
In his rush to save the apparatus of the useless from stalling, Reagan may have
made one error. When he put the idea of the defensive monument in the minds of
Americans, he disrupted the primary sign of the war machine - mutually assured
destruction. He restored hope in American consciousness that perhaps utility could
save US citizens from the total annihilation
certain to destroy the rest of the world.
The disassociation of death and uselessness took previously sacred elements of wartech out of the privileged realm. When these elements became depurified, their
value in terms of the satisfaction of bourgeois desire plummeted. This is partly why
Reagan’s original Star Wars vision has been dismantled.
Thus far, however, most war-tech has not been depurified due to this ideo.
.
logical shppage, and the purity of offensive weapons of mass destruction continues
to be enforced. Nations that do not understand the code of uselessness but that
have state of the art military technology are a cause for great concern. Iraq, Libya,
and North Korea are all good examples. The US government is willing to take
hostile action based merely on the belief that North Korea and Libya might get
weapons of mass destruction and actually use them. In the case of Iraq, the code
was actually broken when that government used chemical weapons. Iraq has not
done well economically or militarily since that time. The lesson to be learned is that
nations that do not subordinate themselves to the bourgeois idols of uselessness will
be sacrificed as heretics, and will be denied access to the icons of uselessness.
In spite of the common wisdom of using the variables of national interest and
utility to explain the relationship between desire and power, it is just as fruitful to
do so using the principles of the anti-economy - perversity and uselessness. The
economy of unchanneled desire and perversity, as suggested by Bataille, penetrates
the surface of utility in a most convincing way. Progress in the 20th century has
primarily consisted of bourgeois culture looking for a new master. In the time of
bourgeois revolution, the aristocracy was destroyed, as was the church with its
spiritual hierarchies, but the primordial
desire to serve the useless has never been
affected. The “primitive”
ritual of offering goods to an angry or potentially angry
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God in order to appease it into a state of neutrality continues to replay itself in
complex capitalist economy. All things must be subordinated
to neutrality - to
uselessness. One major difference between the age of the virtual and more primitive
times is that the contemporary
idols have no metaphysical referent. The ones that
have been constructed are not the mediating points between person and spirit, or
life and afterlife; rather, they are end-points, empty signs. To this paper master,
sacrifice has no limit. The stairs of the temple flow with blood every day. How
fitting for progress to come to this end in the empire of the useless. As this mythic
narrative continues to play itself out, the suggestion of Arthur and Marilouise
Kroker begins to make more and more sense. We are not witnessing the decline of
late capital, but instead, its recline into its own delirious death trance.
Contributors
Kroker are writers and lecturers in the areas of technology
and contemporary
culture. Arthur Kroker is the author of Spasm and co-author of
Data Trash: The Theory of the Virtual Class. Together, they edit both the
CultureTexts Series and the electronic journal CTHEORY.
Their most recent book
was Hacking the Future, published by St. Martin’s Press, New York, and in German
translation by Passagen Verlag, Vienna.
Kathy Acker is a leading American writer. Among others, her books include
Empire of the Senseless, Don Quixote, My Mother: Demonology, and Blood and Guts
in High School. Her most recent novel is entitled Pussy, King of the Pirates. She is a
member of the Editorial Board of CTHEORY.
Robert Adrian X is a Canadian artist who has lived in Europe since 1960 and in
Vienna since 1972. As a visual artist working in most media - sculpture, painting, video, photography
and electronic art - he has been particularly active in the
field of “Art and Telecommunications.”
He is a member of the Editorial Board of
CTHEORY.
Paolo Atzori and Kirk Woolford are writers and electronic artists based at the
Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany.
Jean Baudrillard
is an internationally
acclaimed theorist whose writings trace the
rise and fall of symbolic exchange in the 20th century. Many of his books are
available in English translation, among them Seduction, Fatal Strategies, Forget
Foucault, and The Perfect Crime. He is a member of the Editorial Board of
CTHEORY.
Caroline Bayard is a professor of French and an Associate member of the Department of Philosophy at McMaster University. Her works include More Than Two
Hundred Years of Solitudes (Toronto: ECW Press, 1992); and Transathtiques
postmodernites (Montreal: Balzac, 1996).
Hakim Bey is best known for his zine-publications
that were collected under the
title TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, OntobgicaLAnarcby,
Poetic Terrorism,
and more recently, Immediatism. His most recent book is entitled Millennium
(Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia;
and Dublin: Garden of Delight, 1996).
Jace Clayton (/rupture)
is a writer, installation artist, and cultural activist. Sasha
Costanza-Chock
(Splice) h as b een trying to grow something electro-organic
(including
experimental musicians, visual artists, assorted cyborgs, magicians, and
freaks, called tone*burst) in the Boston area for the past couple of years.
David Cook is professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, and
author of Northrop Frye: A Vision of the New World (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1983, and The Postmodern Scene (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), with
Arthur Kroker. He is a member of the Editorial Board of CTHEORY.
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Digital
Delirium
BC Crandall is the founder and (director of Molecular Realities and the founder
and president of Memetic Engineering.
His most recent book is entitled,
Nanotec&olog:
Molecular Specuhtions on Global Abundance (Cambridge,
MA:
MIT Press, 1996).
Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) is a collective of six artists of different specializations
committed to the production
of a new genre art that explores the intersections
among critical theory, art and tec:hnology. Their most recent book is entitled
Electronic Civil Disobedience (Brooklyn, NY Autonomedia,
1997).
Michael Dartnell is a lecturer in Political Science at Concordia University, Montreal. He is the author of Action Directe: Ultra-.h$ Zrrorism in France, 1979-1987.
He has published several articles on both French political violence and sexual
identity.
Ricardo Dominguez
is part of the editorial collective of Blast5 <http://
interport.net/+xaf>,
Managing Elditor ofThe Thingnyc <http://www.thing.net/
thingnyo,
a member of the New York Committee for Democracy in Mexico,
a former member of Critical Art Ensemble.
Alexander Galloway
ZOME INTERNET.
and
is Director of press6 media, and editorial assistant at RHIHe has written on Tel Quel and the French avant-garde.
Sue Golding is a political philosopher
and theatre director, and is Reader at the
University of Greenwich, London. Her latest book as author/editor
is entitled The
8 Technologies of Otherness (London: Routledge 1997).
Lynn Hershman Leeson is a professor of electronic art at the University of
California,
Davis. In 1995 she received the Siemens Media Prize with Peter
Greenaway and Jean Baudrillard.
An artist in mixed media, including photography, film, installation and computers, she created the first interactive artwork,
Lorna. Her most recent project is the feature film, Conceiving Ah. She is a
Ken Hollings lives in London. He is the author of “Electronically
Yours, Eternally
Elvis” in The Last Sex, Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, eds. (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1993). He recently completed a manuscript entitled “Destroy All Monsters.”
Graham Knight teaches sociology at McMaster University in Hamilton,
Ontario,
Canada. His interests lie primarily in the areas of contemporary
social theory, mass
communications
and popular culture.
Knowbotics
Research (KR+cF), Yvonne Wilhelm, Alexander Tuchacek and
Christian Htibler, is based in Cologne, Germany, at the Academy of Media Arts.
KR+cF has won many media art :awards, including the Prix Ars Electronica 93.
Frank Lantz is a computer game designer from New York City. He also teaches
game design at NYU and writes.sohware
reviews for ID (International
Design)
magazine.
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317
Jon Lebkowsky was cofounder and former CEO of FringeWare, Inc. and is
currently contributing
editor for HotWired’s Piazza, hosting the weekly Electronic
Frontiers Forum <http://www.hotwired.com/eff>.
He’s hung out on the cyber*
(*=punk, activist, foo, et al) fringes for over a decade.
Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist and a member of “Adilkno.”
He is
involved with the Digital City project in Amsterdam and most recently has worked
in Eastern Europe as an advisor for media art and independent
media. He is a
Lev Manovich is a theorist and critic of new media. He is currently working on
two books: a collection of essays on digital realism and a history of the social and
cultural origins of computer graphics technologies, entitled The Engineering of
Wonfiom
Constructivism to Virtual Reality. He is Assistant Professor in the Visual
Arts Department
at the University of California, San Diego.
Lorenzo Miglioli
is an Italian media theorist. He has written three novels: HitlerWarhoL Experience; the first in&an hypertext novel, entitled Ra-Dio and Berhsconi
is a Retrovirus. His new novel, entitled Natura Morta, will be published soon.
When he isn’t trout fishing or chasing elk, Pat Munday teaches in the Program in
Society & Technology at Montana Tech of the University of Montana in Butte.
His current research interest is “Trout as Modern Object/Postmodern
Subject.”
John Nbto is a writer who lives in San Francisco. A volume of his work entitled
Psycho-motor Breathcapes was recently published by Vatic Hum Press, San Francisco. He is also the editor of Orpheus Grid, a magazine of poetry, poetic prose and
essays.
Marcos Novak is an architect, artist, composer, and theorist investigating actual,
virtual and mutant intelligent environments.
He originated the study of liquid
architectures in cyberspace, and is founding director of the RealityLab and the
Advanced Design Research Program at the School of Architecture
at the University
of Texas at Austin.
Warren Padula is best known for his series, INFERNO:
Shopping in America.
Padula has exhibited internationally
and is in numerous museum collections.
Padula is a frequent contributor
to the Krokers’ projects, most recently Hacking
The Future.
Stephen Pfohl is the author of the CultureTexts book, Death at the Parasite Cap. A
video-maker
and performing
artist, he is Professor of Sociology at Boston College
and a member of the CTHEORY
Editorial Board.
Bernhard Serexhe is Curator at the Media Museum, Center for Art and Media
ZKM, in Karlsruhe, Germany. You can visit their World Wide Web site at <http://
www.zkm.de/departments/medienmuseum/main.en.html~.
Alan Shapiro is a software developer who lives in Frankfurt, Germany. He also
taught sociology for several years at New York University. He has published essays
in Semiotext(e) and And Then. He is writing about the virtuality syndrome, the
gambling boom in America, and fatal theory.
318
Digital
Delirium
R.U. Sirius is best known as co-founder and original Editor-In-Chief
of the first
cyberculture magazine, Mondo 2000. He’s co-author, with Timothy Leary, of
Design For Dying (N ew York: Harper Edge, 1997). He’s a regular columnist for
ARTFORUM
International,
21 C, and El75COM,
and a contributing
writer for
Wired. He is a member of the Editorial Board of CTHEORY.
Stelarc is an Australian performance artist who uses medical instruments,.robots,
virtual reality systems and the internet to explore alternate body possibilities. He
has performed with a prosthetic hand, a virtual arm, robot manipulators
and a
mechanism inserted inside his body, He is a member of the Editorial Board of
CTHEORY.
Bruce Sterling, science-fiction
writer extraordinaire,
is the author of, among
others, Iskzndr in the Net and The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the
Electronic Frontier. He is a member of the Editorial Board of CTHEORY
Richard Thieme.is a professional speaker, consultant, and writer. His focus is the
impact of computer technology on people and organizations.
He helps people
understand the relationship of computer networks to their lives.
Paul Virilio is the emblematic French theorist of technology. His major works
include: Pure War, Speed and Politics, and War and Cinema: the Logirtics ofperception. Two of his most recent books are Desert Screen and The Art of The Engine.
Michael A. Weinstein is Professor of Political Science at Purdue University, Deena
Weinstein is Professor of Sociology at DePaul University. Their most recent
jointly-authored
work is Postmodernfized) Simmel (London: Routledge). Michael
Weinstein is most recently the author of Culture/Flesh: bplorations
of Postcivilized
Modernity (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1995). Deena Weinstein
also authored Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology (Lexington MA: Lexington Books,
199 1). They are members of the Fditorial Board of CTHEORY.
Daniel R. White is an associate p:rofessor in the Department
of Philosophy at the
University of Central Florida, where he teaches critical theory and cultural studies.
His recent works include Postmodern Ecology: Communication,
Evolution and Phy
‘(forthcoming,.
SUNY Press, 1997), and Labrinths
of the Mind (forthcoming,
SUNY, 1998).
Louise Wilson
perfomance.
is a British
artist whose work involves site specific installations
and
Siegfried Zielinski has written numerous books in the areas of art, philosophy
and
communications,
including Audiovisionen: Kino und Fernsehen ah Zwischenrpiele in
der Geschichte. He is director of thle Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany
<http://www.khm.uni-koeln.de/>.
He is a member of the Editorial Board of
CTHEORY.
Slavoj Zizek, a leading intellectual in the new social movements of Eastern and
Central Europe, is a researcher at the Institute of Sociology at the University of
Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is the author of numerous books, including LookingAwry:
An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture.
Cultural Studies/
Technology
KathyA&X
RObertAdliaUX
Paolo Aaori &
KilkW~lf&d
JeaIlBaudrillard
Camline Bayard
&GrahamKn.ight
HakimBey
AleksandarBoskovic
David&ok
sashacostanza-chock
&J=Clayton
BC Crandall
Critical Art Ensemble
MichaelDartnell
RicardoDomingw
AlexanderGauoway
Sue Gokhg
Lyn.nHershmanLeeson
Ken Hollings
:
Knowbotics~
A&u bh
.’ ,j
&MarilouiseKlvker
FrankLanlz
Jzps
IevManovich
LoIenzoMiglioli
Pat Munday
John N&I
MXCOSNOWk
Stephen I’fbhl
Be-mhadSemhe
Alan S@iro
RU. Sirius
S&
Bruce Sterling
RichadThieme
Paulviio
DIXnaW’einstein
&MirhaelA.Weinstein
Daniel R White
Louise Wilson
Siegfried Zielinski
ShojZizek
Mont&l
Printed and Bound in Canada
CultureTexts
DIGITAL
DELIRIUM
edited and introduced by
Kroker
Digital Delirium writes the new horizon of
electronic culture. The latest addition to the
CultureTexts Series, Digital Delirium brings
together some of the best minds involved in
rethinking technoculture
in the 90s.
30 Cyber-Days in San Francisco
Digital Delirium writes the streets of San
Francisco as a way of talking about the
ambiguous legacy of wired culture.
Digital Futures
Digital Delirium interviews R.U. Sirius, Paul
Virilio, Jean Baudrillard,
and Slavoj Zizek, and
includes a state of the digital union address by
Bruce Sterling.
Net Politics
The 90s began with a blast of technoutopianism, but it will end with slow suicide in
the surplus streets. Net Politics is the story of
the 90s as a radically split reality: surplus class
and virtual class, surplus flesh and virtual flesh,
separate and digitally unequal.
.
The Global Algorithm
What is gained and what is lost by being
digital? What do we see when we look in the
digital mirror: Future-Fallout
or Net-Utopia?
Digital ears and diamond eyes or real blood
and guts?
Cow
ISBN
photcx Pad Wmtemitz
o-920393-71-3
/

Digital Delirium - Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture

Transcription

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